Argentina's official immigration agency, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones, has reportedly been attacked by a crypto-focused ransomware that blocked border crossing and demanded $4 million in bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin), BleepingComputer reports.
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to stay up to date on the latest crypto and blockchain news.
Argentina's cybercrime agency, Unidad Fiscal Especializada en Ciberdelincuencia, states that the government first identified the hack on August 27th.
"Being approximately 7 a.m. of the day indicated in the paragraph above, the Directorate of Technology and Communications under the Directorate General Information Systems and Technologies of this Organization received numerous calls from various checkpoints requesting technical support," the agency said.
The attack has allegedly triggered a temporary suspension of border crossings for four hours.
The National Directorate of Migration announced that the Comprehensive Migration Capture System that operates in international crossings "was particularly affected, which caused delays in entry and exit to the national territory."
However, according to sources familiar with the matter, the government "will not negotiate with hackers and neither they are too concerned with getting that data back."
It is worth noting that initially the bad actors demanded only $2 million, but increased the ransom to $4 million (about 355 BTC) after seven days passed.
In August 2020, one of the top earning travel companies, CWT (formerly known as Carlson Wagonlit Travel), paid a $4.5 million in bitcoins to hackers who managed to steal sensitive corporate files and compromised 30,000 computers offline.
The hackers reportedly used a ransomware called Ragnar Locker, that encrypts computer files and makes it impossible to use them until the victim pays the ransom.
Access more than 50 of the world's financial markets directly from your EXANTE account – including NASDAQ, London Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange.