The national government
is investigating
the announcement of a group calling itself “LulzSec Muslims” (the light that Islam sheds) that, with the Anonymous logo, announced this week that it
had hacked the computer systems of the Armed Forces.
The
information
published
on
the
General Aníbal Luis Intini, who is in charge of the Cyberdefense Command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Petri, in a preliminary report, that
“it was not a hack, but rather the theft of information through a pen drive.”
Three computer experts are working to try to discover the origin of the failure.
The Minister of Defense, Luis Petri, receives a new plane for the Air Force this month.
Senior sources do not rule out any hypothesis and
are awaiting a final report on the scope of this new attack.
In principle, “the attack
does not compromise
the computer security of the Ministry of Defense or the Armed Forces,” the senior sources stated.
They suspect a "mole"
The preliminary report assumes that a “mole” put a pen drive in
a computer at a front desk of the Army, Navy and Air Force
and copied some documents that were distributed.
Most of the documents
“are prior to November 1, 2023
,” the sources specified.
This hypothesis is based on the fact that, for example, the documents displayed on the Dark Web “do not have attached documents.”
Until Friday,
the Ministry of Defense nor any Armed Forces.
had received a “ransom demand
or a sale price for not disseminating the documents that the organization claims to have.”
In any case, the case worried the Minister of Defense at a time when cyberattacks are rampant around the world, especially since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas. Javier Milei's government has openly supported Israel after the terrorist attack of October 7 and has been criticized by Hamas and other sectors of the Arab world.
In its message in English, the LulzSec Muslims group claims to have accessed
sensitive data, including names, surnames, phone numbers, addresses, IDs, bank accounts and military cards.
In addition to personal data, LulzSec Muslims announced having obtained access to
critical documents from the Joint Cyber Defense Command and telecommunications companies
.
Among these documents would be “military exchanges and messages, command reports and secret meetings with American experts.”
In principle, the announcement was made through Telegram groups
last Wednesday, February 21
.
This penetration would include documents from the
“reserved” and “confidential” categories.
It is like “proof” of the alleged hacking before continuing with the dissemination of more information, said an expert consulted by this newspaper.
A document released by this organization with the
“confidential”
category , for example, is the announcement of an elevation of
an order from the cyber defense commander of November 2022.
Another labeled
“reserved”
is the request to change a helicopter at the Marambio base in Antarctica.
How the "Cyber Defense" command works
The investigation is being carried out by the Joint Cyber Defense Command, which was created by Resolution 343 of 2014
of the Ministry of Defense, with the mission of conducting cyber defense operations.
The cyber defense system of the Armed Forces
is made up of the Joint Cyber Defense Command (CCCD), the Cyber Defense Directorates of the three Armed Forces and the tactical cyber defense fractions made up of the Argentine Army.
Although in 2014 the Navy already had an emerging faction in its organization whose mission was the cyber protection of the computer networks of said Force, it was
in 2022 when it changed its name to Cyber Defense Directorate.
The remaining Cyber Defense Directorates, corresponding to the Air Force and the Army, were created during the years 2017 and 2018 respectively.
The Joint Cyber Defense Command fulfills its mission permanently and is made up of more than 70 officers and non-commissioned officers from the three Armed Forces.
As a litmus test, he participated in
the cyber protection of the G20 summit meeting of presidents during 2018
.
He also led the first joint multi-domain cyber defense and electronic warfare exercise for the protection of critical infrastructures, developed during 2022 in the Buenos Aires town of Las Toninas in 2021.
For this exercise, the strategic objective
to protect the submarine cable mooring station
in that town was chosen and the cyber defense directorates and the tactical cyber defense elements, electronic warfare elements of the Armed Forces, Air Force aircraft, and a Navy offshore patrol vessel.
This was not the first attack.
At the end of 2021,
members of the Argentine Armed and Security Forces suffered the leak of their personal data
, as reported by the consulting firm Privacy Affairs, which is in charge of advising on the protection of private information.
The leak is called "#AnibalLeaks" and, in a Twitter account with the photo of the former Minister of National Security, Aníbal Fernández, they published his cell phone number along with the link to the deep web with the data.