Q COSTARICA — Amid the bidding process for the new 5G cellular network, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE)—Costa Rican Electricity Institute—reported on Thursday that it was the victim of cyber espionage.
It also confirmed the theft of 9 gigabytes of information from internal emails.
The matter was classified as a national security issue by Paula Bogantes, head of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación, Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones (Micitt)—Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications.
Although authorities are still in the evidence-gathering and technical analysis stages, indications point to an Asian actor linked to global corporate espionage.
The complaint has already been filed with the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ)—Judicial Investigation Agency, and the Costa Rican government is working with U.S. advisors to safeguard ICE’s information and address the incident.
ICE denied any disruption to electricity and telecommunications services due to the cybersecurity breach. The Clues
Bogantes explained that the alert stemmed from a technical report that identified a security breach in ICE’s technological infrastructure the previous February.
She detailed that, as part of the investigation, a specialized technical forensic analysis was conducted, which confirmed the presence of a cyber actor focused on the telecommunications sector.
“The presence of this threat actor, with an emphasis on the telecommunications industry and whose objective is cyber espionage, was confirmed. Simultaneously, the United States government was contacted, and they are supporting us and coordinating efforts to address the incident. This threat actor has been identified in 42 countries, and its focus is the telecommunications sector and cyber espionage,” the official explained.
Email Extraction
For his part, ICE’s CEO, Marco Acuña, stated that the first suspicious activity was detected at the end of January.
According to the official, the attack did not compromise critical electricity or telecommunications services, and he confirmed that it focused on internal information technology systems.
“The cyber espionage is not related to the electricity or telecommunications networks, which are ICE’s critical services, but rather to the information technology networks that handle emails and the flow of administrative information,” he stated.
Acuña also confirmed the extraction of data from ICE servers.
“We have detected the extraction of 9 GB of email data. We are working to prevent this from continuing,” he indicated.
The official added that “they steal information for various purposes, which are clearly not transparent or legal.”
This occurs during the 5G network tender process, a process of modernizing the infrastructure necessary to deploy the 5G network in Costa Rica.
Aware that a fifth-generation cellular network also requires upgrading the data transport network, the institute—through its kölbi brand—is in the final stages of a tender worth nearly $40 million to build the architecture that will support the growth in digital traffic. Transport networks in telecommunications function like the arteries and veins of the system, as they are responsible for moving the data that enables cellular telephony and digital services to operate.
Meanwhile, the 5G network tender process is in the price improvement stage. ICE intends to award the contract by the end of March.