The Costa Rican government has seen a number of targeted cyberattacks against a range of its ministries over the past week.
According to Security Week, the Finance Ministry was the first to report problems, after a number of its systems were affected from tax collection to importation and exportation processes through the customs agency.
This was followed by attacks on the social security agency’s human resources system and on the Labor Ministry. The attack forced the Finance Ministry to close down for several hours.
President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado said, “The Costa Rican state will not pay anything to these cybercriminals.”
Costa Rica’s Exporters Chamber executive director Christian Rucavado said the attack on the customs agency had collapsed the country’s import and export logistics. He described a race against the clock for perishable items waiting in cold storage and said they still didn’t have an estimate for the economic losses.
He remarked, “Some borders have delays because they’re doing the process manually. We have asked the government for various actions like expanding hours so they can attend to exports and imports.”
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