Conti ransomware claims responsibility for the attack on Costa Rica

Conti ransomware gang claimed responsibility for a ransomware attack that hit the government infrastructure of Costa Rica.

Last week a ransomware attack has crippled the government infrastructure of Costa Rica causing chaos.

The Conti ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the attack, while the Costa Rican government refused to pay a ransom.

“The Costa Rican state will not pay anything to these cybercriminals.” said Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado.

The attack took place early this week, it impacted multiple government services from the Finance Ministry to the Labor Ministry.

“The initial attack forced the Finance Ministry to shut down for several hours the system responsible for the payment of a good part of the country’s public employees, which also handles government pension payments. It also has had to grant extensions for tax payments.” reads the post published by the Associated Press.

Costa Rican businesses fear that the ransomware gang could have infiltrated confidential information they provided to the government. The leak of this data could pose a serious risk to these organizations.

At the time of this writing, the Conti ransomware gang had published 50% of the stolen data.

It is not clear if this attack was politically motivated, while Conti ransomware gang announced its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Costa Rica publicly condemned the invasion.

“You also can’t separate it from the complex global geopolitical situation in a digitalized world,” Alvarado said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Costa Rica)