Buenos Aires legislature announces ransomware attack

The legislature of Argentina’s capital city announced a ransomware attack this week, saying that its internal operating systems were compromised and WiFi connectivity was down.

In several tweets, the account for the legislature of Buenos Aires said the attack began on Sunday and took down the building’s WiFi network, among other systems. 

"Necessary measures were quickly taken to ensure continuity of work and not to interrupt parliamentary work,” they wrote. On Tuesday, they said, they planned to restore the WiFi network and slowly bring other systems back online.

“We are working with the areas involved and with specialists in the field to restore normality to all processes as soon as possible,” the legislature said.

The incident has already been reported to several law enforcement agencies in Argentina.

Mañana ya estará operativa la red de wi fi y se irán habilitando progresivamente el resto de los sistemas. Estamos trabajando con las áreas involucradas y con especialistas en la materia para restablecer la normalidad de todos los procesos lo antes posible.

— Legislatura CABA (@LegisCABA) September 12, 2022

The legislature’s website is still down as of Tuesday afternoon EST. The affected government agencies did not respond to requests for comment about the state of the restoration effort.

No ransomware group has taken credit for the incident, but several gangs have targeted governments across Central and South America over the past year.

Argentina’s Judiciary of Córdoba was attacked by a ransomware group last month, while just two weeks ago, Chile’s cybersecurity incident response team said an unnamed government agency was dealing with a ransomware attack that targeted the organization’s Microsoft tools and VMware ESXi servers.

The Dominican Republic, meanwhile, announced that it was refusing to pay a ransom following an attack on one of its departments on August 26.

Ransomware groups targeted the Secretary of State for Finance of Rio de Janeiro in April and crippled the government of Costa Rica in May. There have also been several other rumored attacks on South American nations that were never confirmed.