The files of the Secretariat of National Defense of Mexico were victims of a cyber attack, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Friday, who ruled out that this could affect the country's security.
"They took advantage of the fact that they are carrying out a change in the Army, the general told me, of the information system, that is why hackers are professionals, and they get in and out of all the information, but it is in the public domain, everything that is said there it is certain", exposed in his daily press conference.
Without specifying when the attacks took place, the Mexican president confirmed the press versions about the hacking of the information systems of the armed forces and the extraction of several files that include reports on his state of health and the failure of the operation to capture a son of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán that occurred in 2019.
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His statements come after the Mexican media Latinus reported the leak of tens of thousands of emails that were from 2016 to the present on the servers of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena).
The documents include details about the state of health of the president,
who suffered a heart attack in 2013 and a catheterization last January.
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In addition, according to the journalistic report, they show the power of the Army within the Government and disputes between the heads of the Sedena, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, and the Navy (Semar), José Rafael Ojeda.
There are also details about the so-called 'Culiacanazo', a failed operation in October 2019 that sought to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of 'El Chapo' Guzmán in Sinaloa, in the northwest of the country.
"What is it that they make known? What is in the public domain, who owes nothing, fears nothing," said López Obrador.
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The attack on the systems of the Mexican army was carried out by a group of hackers known as Guacamaya, which also carried out similar actions on police and military security institutions in several Latin American countries.
In Chile, hackers seized the emails of the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces.
In El Salvador, they accessed the emails of the National Police and the military.
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In Peru, they entered the emails of the joint chiefs and the army and in Colombia they hacked the emails of the General Command of the Armed Forces.
However, the most forceful attack happened in the Sedena where they managed to access numerous files.
Among those documents, which the Mexican journalist Carlos Loret released on Thursday night in the Latinus media outlet, is a report on the state of health of López Obrador who, according to the documents, has been diagnosed with gout, hypothyroidism and hypertension, and
suffered a "serious risk unstable angina" on January 2,
which required his transfer in an air ambulance from the south of the country to the Mexican capital to be admitted to the Central Military Hospital.
The 68-year-old president confirmed the information about his state of health and assured that he feels well and that he undergoes a medical check-up every three or four months.
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Referring to the January event, when he faced a risk of a heart attack, López Obrador said that at that time his doctors recommended that he undergo a cardiac catheterization, a procedure that was postponed until January 21 because he contracted the coronavirus.
"I understand that this same group has already done the same thing in other countries, I think in Colombia, in Chile, that's why I think it's something that is handled from abroad, which is not from Mexico," he said.
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Before, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Users of Financial Services (Condusef) have warned that Mexico ranks third in cyberattacks worldwide.
But López Obrador ruled out implementing more measures to protect the Armed Forces from future hacks.
"Nothing (of additional measures), because if you act with transparency, which is the golden rule of democracy, if you don't lie, if you speak the truth, then what problem can you have," he argued.
In 2013 López Obrador suffered a heart attack that he overcame without major difficulties and that did not prevent him from continuing his political career and participating in the 2018 elections in which he was the winner.
The ruler has indicated that at the end of his six-year term in 2024 he will retire from politics.
With information from AP and EFE