Tag Archive for: México

Ransomware attack hamstrings three District Attorneys’ offices in NM • Source New Mexico

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A ransomware attack impacted three local prosecutors’ offices around New Mexico earlier this week.

Wednesday morning, someone ran ransomware on servers in four offices connected to the Administrative Office of the District Attorneys (AODA), including the server for the network prosecutors and public defenders use to share court records called the consolidated statewide case management system (CMS).

In interviews with Source New Mexico, a spokesperson for the First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies in Santa Fe and Ninth Judicial District Attorney Quentin Ray in Clovis said their offices were impacted by the attack.

A third prosecutor’s office, the Fifth Judicial District Attorney in Carlsbad, was also affected, according to Ray. A phone call seeking comment from Fifth DA Dianna Luce on Thursday was not returned.

Marcus Montoya, president of AODA and the elected Eighth Judicial District Attorney in Taos, said Thursday afternoon “we’re still triaging” which cases and hearings the attack impacted.

“Affected might mean different things, so how much is compromised is hard for me to say,” he said. “Maybe some districts might be a little more exposed than others, but for the most part, a majority of the data is protected and will be available.”

The attack left prosecutors unable to access the case management system, slowing their work and making it more tedious, Montoya said. Prosecutors and staff instead had to access a different server and move the files over to an external hard drive, which they carried into court, he said.

“It’s contained, and it’s ultimately not as bad as probably your traditional ransomware attack, so I think we’re in a good place,” Montoya said. 

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Ray, the DA in Clovis, said those case files include any information about people accused of crimes, evidence in their cases, and prosecutors’ own case notes.

Some hearings had to be delayed, he said, “others we were able to MacGyver around.” Between 10% and 15% of the cases his office handles…

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México registra 275 intentos de infección de malware por minuto

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Los datos del reciente Panorama de Amenazas de Kaspersky revelan que la tasa de ataques de malware contra computadoras en la región se mantuvo estable (un 3% menos) en la comparación de 12 meses (de junio de 2022 a julio de 2023 y de junio de 2021 a julio de 2022). En total, se registraron 1,190 millones de bloqueos, lo que representa un promedio de 37.9 intentos de ataque por segundo en América Latina. Brasil es el principal objetivo de estos ataques, registrando una media de 1,515 bloqueos por minuto, seguido de México donde se registraron 275 ataques por minuto.

Entre las principales amenazas detectadas en los equipos, destaca nuevamente la piratería, cuyos productos pueden contener algún tipo de malware, además de no contar con las correcciones o parches de seguridad correspondientes para atender vulnerabilidades que los ciberdelincuentes podrían aprovechar. En América Latina el 66% del software utilizado es pirata, casi el doble del promedio mundial que es del 35%, lo que convierte a la piratería en el gran villano de la región.

Por otro lado, se encuentra el adware, programas maliciosos que muestran publicidad excesiva y no solicitada a la víctima. En menor medida, el estudio también muestra scripts maliciosos, direcciones falsas, archivos/PDF maliciosos y troyanos. Estos datos ponen de manifiesto que las técnicas utilizadas por los ciberdelincuentes son siempre las mismas: un mensaje fraudulento para llevar a las víctimas a un sitio web falso, correos electrónicos con un archivo malicioso adjunto para infectar el dispositivo e infecciones durante la navegación (en el caso de los scripts).

México registra 275 intentos de infección de malware por minuto - unnamed

Además de los usuarios de Internet, la ciberdelincuencia también apunta a las organizaciones. En este segmento, el estudio muestra los sectores más atacados, donde las entidades gubernamentales (15.49% de los intentos de infección) son las que atraen más la atención de los delincuentes. Le siguen los sectores agrícolas (11.82%), de comercio minorista/mayorista (11.55%), industria (8.57%), educación (6.92%), salud (5.28%), TI/Telecomunicaciones (4.55%) y el financiero y de seguros (4.55%).

Las estafas en línea que analizamos en esta sección del estudio demuestran que…

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New Mexico Tech professor receives outstanding mentor award

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A New Mexico Tech faculty member is being recognized by a statewide research organization for his role as an exceptional mentor to his students.

Professor Jun Zheng. Courtesy photo.

Jun Zheng, professor of computer science and engineering, is one of two recipients of the 2022 NM EPSCoR Mentor Award. The New Mexico Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NM EPSCoR) recently announced the recipients of the annual awards.

NM EPSCoR said its award recipients “demonstrated characteristics of exceptional mentors, including strong professional and interpersonal relationships; working to advance their mentees’ academic, research, and professional goals; and creating inclusive environments for diverse students.”

Zheng, who earned his doctorate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has a mentorship style guided by a set of five principles he has refined over the last 15 years:

  1. Be supportive.
  2. Set clear mentor expectations.
  3. Maintain mutual respect and trust.
  4. Be inclusive.
  5. Create opportunities for your students.

According to NM EPSCoR, multiple mentees nominated Zheng for the award, each citing a specific time or occasion when his mentorship was essential for their academic success.

“When I first came to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, I did not have any relevant background and did not understand academic research. Based on my situation at that time, Dr. Zheng carefully helped me to plan my studies and choose the right courses so that I could step into the field of computer science,” the nominator wrote.

Another student nominated Zheng for his encouragement to attend a National Science Foundation EPSCoR Artificial Intelligence workshop.

“He emphasized to me that a research meeting is a good place to get to know how others are doing research and I would get a chance to learn how to deliver an idea to a non-expert audience. This inspired me, so I actively participated in the meeting to learn as much as I could. This valuable experience is helping me a lot in my later research,” the nominator wrote.

Another student mentored by Zheng said it was especially meaningful to have him at their side in the final stages of their master’s degree.

“I…

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Hacking revelations put Mexico military on defensive

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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends an independence day military parade – Copyright AFP Richard Pierrin

Samir Tounsi with Paulina Abramovich in Santiago and Juan Sebastian Serrano in Bogota

Leaks from a shadowy group of hackers targeting secret files held by the armed forces of several Latin American nations have fueled controversy in Mexico about the military’s growing power.

A trove of sensitive information was stolen from the Mexican defense ministry by the collective called Guacamaya, which has also claimed cyberattacks in Chile, Colombia and Peru.

“Their objectives are more political than economic,” said Diego Macor, a cyber-security expert at US technology giant IBM in Chile, who describes members of the network as “hacker-activists.”

The leaks revealed that the Mexican army continued to use Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli firm NSO Group after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018, according to an investigation by the Network in Defense of Digital Rights and its partners.

The targets included journalists and a human rights activist, according to the probe, which was assisted by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

The army insisted that it had only used spyware to fight organized crime.

The hack also left Mexico’s military facing allegations that some of its members have links to drug cartels, and that it engineered a contentious security reform giving it control of the National Guard, which was previously under civilian command.

Two soldiers sold grenades, other weapons and tactical equipment to drug cartel members, according to analysis of the files by the civil society group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.

The Mexican and Peruvian militaries also allegedly monitored civil society organizations such as Amnesty International, which condemned their actions as “unacceptable.”

“The undue monitoring of civil society organizations identified in the Guacamaya collective leaks is an example of the hostile context in which we work as organizations defending human rights in the Americas,” said Amnesty regional director Erika Guevara-Rosas.

“Instead of monitoring the activities of civil society…

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