Vice President Raquel Peña announced on Monday, 16 October 2023 the recovery of the Migration Agency database that was hacked a few weeks ago. Vice President Peña explained that after the government recovered this platform, it decided that it will also be used and added to the platform managed by the National Police, so that the authorities can purge the later and make better use of the information.
The Vice President says this is a follow-up to the measures that are constantly being taken to ensure public security policies are being applied in a transversal way.
Likewise, she highlighted that the Joint Security Task Force has implemented a set of strategic measures to seize illegal firearms, which has resulted in the seizure of nearly 300 guns in the last 15 days.
The Migration Agency recently admitted that the hack that entity suffered last month included names, addresses and dates of birth of citizens of the Dominican Republic and foreigners.
However, the Migration Agency says that the institution’s operations and data encryption were not compromised.
The DGM admitted the hack that resulted in the unauthorized exposure of data.
“These situations, which have increased globally and are increasingly frequent in state institutions – carried out by international groups of cybercriminals – lead us to work diligently with the authorities to determine the scope of the leak and to firmly commit to adopting measures to mitigate the impact and protect the privacy of those affected,” the entity said.
It was on 14 September 2023 when the DGM detected unusual activity in one of its systems, so they proceeded to notify the National Cybersecurity Center.
The hacker group Rhysida claimed responsibility for the hack and has auctioned the data collected from the Migration Agency for 25 bitcoins, that is, more than RD$37 million.
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N Digital
17 October 2023