A new cyberattack has now targeted two separate and important state institutions within the nation of Paraguay. The Jury for the Prosecution of Magistrates and the Ministry of Public Health were both attacked by cybercriminals. Paraguay’s official cyber incident response center confirmed these attacks occurred on Saturday, the twenty-first of June this year. The government’s technology ministry confirmed that these two different institutions were indeed targeted by the online attackers.
The Jury for the Prosecution of Magistrates communicated that it discovered suspicious activity on its computer network systems. This activity strongly suggested that there was at least a possible attempt at gaining unauthorized system access. The government agency therefore proceeded with the complete blocking of its servers to protect files and programs. This preventative action was taken immediately after the initial discovery to secure all of the organization’s sensitive data.
This attack follows another recent high-profile cybersecurity incident that occurred earlier in the month of June.
The ministry has now informed the public that both of the cybersecurity incidents have been successfully contained. These attacks are, however, still currently under investigation in order to fully reestablish complete system and operational normality. The authorities are working to understand the full scope of the unauthorized access attempts against the state institutions.
The Ministry of Information, Technology, and Communication, also known as MITIC, activated its established incident response protocols.
On the ninth of June, the official X account of President Santiago Peña was hacked by unknown cybercriminals. Those attackers took control of the account and published false information about a new, fictitious bitcoin announcement. The presidential staff was later able to successfully recover full access to the compromised social media account.
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