The consequences that still affect DANE after the attack on its website

The National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE, reported “technical difficulties” on its website on November 10, 2021. The entity lost access to the site, along with all the information it contained, data that are of Colombians and contain important details and figures for the country.

At that time, the director of DANE, Juan Daniel Oviedo, stated: “So far we have no evidence that the confidentiality of all information that resides within DANE has been breached. What is happening at the moment is that in the face of the uncertainty generated by these cyber incidents, we are completely isolated from the point of view of external communications and internal communications of DANE officials, in order to avoid any kind of window of opportunity for complementary incidents or breaches that we want to avoid”, but, some time later, details of the 'hack' suffered on the page are being released.

Later, the same official explained that the attacker managed to access the DANE information system and began to “knock down” the servers, to have control as the administrator of the page. In fact, he stated that he deleted some databases, but that he had the support of this information.

The Colombian revealed details of what the entity experienced during the 10 days of the attack. According to the report, the hackers were asking for $25,000 to release the dammed data; approximately 230 teras of information were retained, which at certain times it was not known whether said databases had been lost or not.

This was revealed by Noticias Uno, which also reported that, at the time of the attack, DANE did not have a chief of computer security. Fortunately, the employees' payroll bases were not lost, since without them the respective salaries could not be paid. But, the media adds, that historical figures were lost, which would not have any kind of support.

The problem of the loss of information, in addition to the general data collected by the department, are those that are considered personal, names, ID cards, telephone numbers, financial figures of the same and so on, which are given to the entity under reservation and which cannot be published.

This information, it is not really known, whether it was stolen or not, since the hackers could have made a copy, which can be distributed without control or law. The curious thing about the fact is that other institutions have also been infiltrated, so denounced former president Andrés Pastrana, who said he had information about hacked into the pages of the National Institute for Drug and Food Surveillance, Invima and the Registry itself.

Precisely, the national registrar Alexander Vega had already spoken before the elections of March 13; initially it was attributed to this type of attack, the reason why, that day, the entity's page fell.

Returning to the case of DANE, teams from the Technical Investigation Corps and specialized prosecutors continue to look for clues to what happened, which so far has no name or indication of who or who may have been responsible. Despite having already passed 5 months, some DANE services have not yet been recovered, so the department would be working and hiring firms to help solve the failures.

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