MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ransomware attack hits Paraguayan Armed Forces?

The perpetrators would send a note demanding payment in exchange for a way to decrypt the affected documents

Paraguay's General Directorate of Information and Communication Technologies of the Armed Forces Sunday issued a bulletin alerting all units of a ransomware infection that allegedly hit its computer systems, it was reported in Asunción.

Ransomware is a virus that can have a significant impact by compromising backups, web pages, email, and cloud storage, it was explained.

A first bulletin mentioned a “critical severity and red alert” as well as a case of “black hunt.” The document also pointed out that it had a direct impact on more than 300 companies associated with a local operator.

However, hours later the bulletin was rephrased and the severity was changed to “high.” All mention of the company providing the service was deleted as was any allusion to “black hunt”.

The most recent version of the official Armed Forces bulletin explains that ”ramsonware encrypts all the data on your computer (images, text files, Excel sheets, music, videos, etc.) and adds its additional extension to each file, creating the text files #ramsonware_ReadMe.txt in each folder containing the encrypted files.“

”In each folder with the encrypted files, a ReadMe.txt text file will appear. It is a ransom money note,“ the document states.

”There you can find information about ways to pay the ransom and some other information. The ransom note usually contains instructions on how to buy the decryption tool from the gangsters,” the Paraguayan Armed Forces also explained.

Meanwhile, the Paraguayan Navy is about to acquire 20 new patrol boats within its fleet modernization program to perform surveillance tasks in the Paraguay and Paraná rivers bordering Argentina and Brazil. The new light river patrol boat is equipped with a 200HP 4-stroke engine and stands out for its efficiency and versatility in river missions, it was explained.