Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has announced that the country is “at war” with Conti ransomware hackers after they broke into 27 government institutions. The attack led to major disruptions across numerous government ministries and IT systems.
“The attack being experienced by Costa Rica at the hands of cyber criminals, cyber terrorists, is declared a national emergency. We are signing this decree, precisely, to declare a state of national emergency across the entire public sector of the Costa Rican state and allow our society to respond to those attacks as criminals actions,” Chavez said.
After attacks on several government ministries, the hackers issued a call for Costa Ricans to “go out on the street and demand payment.”
Despite the mounting disruption, the Costa Rican president has not said whether he will pay the ransom, but he has outlined his “Plan for implementation of Cyber-security Measures.”
Since the attack began, the Conti hacking group has posted more than 600 gigabytes of government data online.
The group threatened further releases and said on its darknet website that it would delete the decryption keys needed to restore the government’s computer systems to normal unless they were paid within a week.