Colombia · September 12, 2023 · 5 min
IFX: ransomware against one vendor silenced public agencies in Colombia
MedellínSoftware · Medellín, Colombia
September 2023. The blow was not at the presidential palace. It was at IFX Networks, the company that hosted them. The health ministry and dozens of agencies went quiet.
medellinsoftware.com/story/ifx-ransomware-entidades-publicas-colombia/
Date
Sep 12, 2023
Target
Vendor IFX
Effect
Public agencies
Countries
Colombia and Chile
On September 12, 2023, IFX Networks — a regional provider operating out of Chile — suffered ransomware. In Colombia the symptom was different: state pages that would not load, queues that would not move, the Ministry of Health among the agencies without service.
Nobody had to enter each ministry's Active Directory. The vendor was enough. The same lesson as SolarWinds, at local scale: whoever hosts the state's mail and web becomes the state.
The incident spread to clients in Chile and other countries in the region. Services came back in pieces, over days. Nobody published a haul of hundreds of millions. The damage was at the counter: people who could not finish a procedure.
For a company in Medellín the reading is simple. Your cloud is not a purchasing detail. It is your surface. If the vendor falls, you fall.
The desk
The file is public. The briefing is requested.
AI and deep military intelligence. Medellín.