Borderland Beat by DD
republished from Article 19
01 Dec 2014
Over
the course of 2014, ARTICLE 19 has documented a total of 12 cyber-attacks on
news portals in Mexico, all at moments when they were reporting acts of
corruption or irregularities detected in the civil service.
The
online news portals e-consulta.com in Puebla, Chiapas Paralelo in
Chiapas and Mientras Tanto en México in Jalisco have all suffered
cyber-attacks aimed at bringing their websites down.
In
the case of e-consulta.com, the attacks began on the morning of Tuesday
18 November. The site’s managers and staff noticed that a malicious code known
as an exploit had been introduced into their system, deleting files and
databases. The portal was down for several hours.
Further
attacks were noted up to and including Monday 24 November but Rodolfo Ruíz, CEO
of e-consulta, stated in an interview for ARTICLE 19 that these attacks had not
been of any major consequence.
The
attacks on e-consulta.com came at a time when the site was covering the
protests occurring in Chalchihuapan, those taking place due to the construction of the Intermunicipal Park on the Cholula archaeological site, known as the Park of
the 7 Cultures, and which resulted in cancellation of the project, and the
alleged acts of corruption in the purchase of electric cultivators by
the state government.
In
the case of the Chiapas Paralelo site, the online news site began
receiving denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on Friday 21 November. A DoS consists
of saturating a site with millions of user access requests, causing it to
suspend its service.
Chiapas
Paralelo was out of operation for three
days, coming back online on Monday 24 November. According to staff journalist,
Isaín Mandujano, the attacks began after he and a colleague, Gabriela
Cutiño, were assaulted by security guards at an
event organised by federal deputy Manlio Fabio Beltrones in Tuxtla Gutiérrez on
Wednesday 19 November.
The
Jalisco online news site, Mientras Tanto en México, suffered two DoS
attacks in less than a week. According to Karla Rivera, the site’s director,
one of the IP addresses in question was a government body in the state of
Morelos. The second attack took place on Monday night, shortly after a video
had been uploaded criticising the police action during demonstrations on 20
November, and broadcasting President Peña’s response in this regard. In an interview
with ARTICLE19, Rivera stated that this attack was the fourth one suffered this
year.
Cyber-attacks
against online news sites undermine their journalists’ and contributors’
freedom of speech and are a violation of society’s right to be informed.
ARTICLE 19 is calling on the federal and Veracruz authorities to investigate these events, guarantee the integrity of the sites’ contributors and protect their right to gather and disseminate information without suffering any form of pressure
I'm surprised Mexico has the technical capabilities to cyber attack :-)
ReplyDeleteHere's a good English language report on the attacks on sinembargo, which has been very critical of EPN/PRI. Mentions other attacks, too: https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-15823-mexican-news-site-sinembargo-asks-government-investigate-series-attacks
ReplyDeleteDD, can you please comment on the #1DMX (stands for 1 de Diciembre, en MeXico) protests?
ReplyDeleteHundreds of thousands of cuidadanos in Mexico City protested against EPN and his narco-gobierno.
https://twitter.com/maxfreixenet/status/539606152301252608/photo/1
I got your back bro. Check the post I finished this afternoon and posted.
DeleteWack!!!...has nothing to do with drug war..off to a bad start.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't talk about who killed who or who became the new leader of the newest cartel, but you don't think government attempts to silence the media and repress it from reporting corruption of government is not related to the drug war.
DeleteGive them a chance. They've earned it.
Delete@3:25 Is all related monkey
DeleteGood luck with getting a real investigation.
ReplyDeleteIs Manlio fabio beltrones really a thug?? with bigotes de carlos salinas de gortari
ReplyDeleteManlio fabio beltrones, "la fabis" is not a thug, he is the madrota of many thugs, he does not need to get his well manicured hands dirty, he has people to do that and more for him, including the US whipping his drug trafficking/money laundering record clean...
ReplyDeleteDD are you a guy or a woman? I don't want to flirt with a guy, no matter how attractive he thinks he is, it would be good for women to know what you are and have more female visitors, maybe get back havana pura and texas granma, since the castristas rode her to cuba and she escaped to the US, it has rained a lot, i hope texas granma looks better than fidel, we can't be depending on one lonely canadiana for company, we need some women to pick on her!!!
ReplyDelete