Chile’s President instructs Defense Minister to return due to Joint Chiefs of Staff hacking

The President of the Republic of Chile, Gabriel Boric, asked the Minister of National Defense, Maya Fernández, to return to the country to lead the response to the hacking of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Emco).

The Ministry of Defense informed yesterday in a public statement that: “Given the known facts related to the security failure of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emails, the President of the Republic has instructed the Minister of National Defense to return to the country to lead the response to these facts.

“The government has ordered an administrative inquiry to determine the corresponding responsibilities. Additionally, the background information has been made available to the military justice system to initiate a criminal investigation”.

It should be noted that the Secretary of State was part of the presidential delegation that is in official activities at the UN.

According to the local media El Mostrador, the organization Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), and the EnlaceHacktivista platform revealed the latest leak by the computer hacker group Guacamaya, which includes a series of police and military documents from different countries in the region.

Among the leaked documents are 400,000 emails from the Emco of the Chilean Ministry of Defense, an agency led by Major General Guillermo Paiva.

“We leaked military and police systems of Mexico, Peru, Salvador, Chile, Colombia, and we deliver this to those who legitimately do what they can with this information”, declared the hacker group in a statement released on September 19, the Army Glories Day.

Covering military and police communications since 2019, the leak would bring to light internal emails of the Defense Minister’s advisory body on matters related to the preparation and joint employment of the Armed Forces, in addition to meetings and reports on the military situation both in the south of Chile – where the State of Emergency is in force – and in the north with the deployment due to the migratory crisis.

Senator Kenneth Pugh, a Senate National Defense Committee member, told El Mostrador that they are monitoring the situation, even though he maintained that the leak should not contain sensitive information since it is handled by other means.

However, he stated that computer expertise must be made given the enormous amount of emails. He confirmed that the authorities of the Ministry of Defense would be summoned to Congress.

“The decision was taken to summon the Undersecretary of Defense, Gabriel Gaspar, for next Tuesday, September 27, considering the preliminary background of the leak,” commented the legislator.

He added that the focus would be on discussing the framework law on Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure, which is in its first constitutional procedure.

He also said that in a second instance, both Minister Fernandez and the head of Emco would be summoned “to explain which were the areas exposed in the leak”.

As Infodefensa reported, in the Participative Public Account 2022 in June, the Minister of Defense announced a plan to increase the country’s cyber defense capabilities, a “fundamental aspect for sustaining the force and security in operations”.

With information from InfoDefensa