Costa Rica’s presidential website hacked

Casa Presidencial’s website (www.presidencia.go.cr) briefly was taken over by a hacker group Sunday night, but no further damage was detected, Communications Minister Francisco Chacón said on Monday.  

IT experts detected the intrusion just minutes after 10 p.m. while doing regular backups of the website.

The cyber-attack was attributed to a group called Latinhack, whose members have perpetrated more than 13,000 attacks on various government sites in Spain, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, Chile and the Dominican Republic.

Chacón said officials “have identified the country of origin as well as the [Internet Protocol address] of the computer used so that appropriate measures can be taken.”

He also said the website’s information was never at risk because it is physically stored in different places at separate servers, so these events do not affect users.