Chilean Ministry of Defence hacked by group claiming ISIS ties
Tue 24 Feb 2015
Chile’s Ministry of Defence was reportedly hacked last night by cybercriminals claiming to belong to the Islamic State militant group, ISIS.
The ministry’s homepage (www.ssdefensa.cl) this morning read “Hacked” and gave the username “Sadam Husein.” In English the group posted “Sorry Admin Because Your Site Security is Low WE aRe ISIS”, and a Spanish message read “Somos ISIS, no me olviden” (We are ISIS, don’t forget me) and “alá es el único DIOS” (allah is the only GOD).
The hack took place at 22:30 (01:30 GMT) and lasted only a few minutes before the compromised page was removed earlier this morning. Browsers were redirected to the website of the ministry’s subsecretary of defence. soychile.cl took the above screenshot of the welcome page, which the ministry, headed by Jorge Burgos, has confirmed as genuine.
“The situation activated the corresponding alarms, measures were adopted and sensitive information from the ministry was not put at risk,” the ministry said in a short statement today. It also confirmed that email security and other sensitive information have not been breached, and that it would be carrying out an investigation to identify the criminals.
Although national sites in Chile have been frequently attacked over the past few years, both across cyber vectors and by physical anarchists, this is the first hack allegedly conducted by the extremist Islamist group on a Chilean government website.
When Chile last sat on the United Nations Security Council in 2013, it did not support the US in its proposal to authorise a military invasion of Iraq against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
