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By KELIN DILLON

After the hacking of Mexico’s National Lottery (Lotenal) on Thursday, May 27, by the cybercriminal group Avaddon, the attackers have threatened to release sensitive information relating to the lottery’s workplace, particularly in the Sports Forecasts division, if Lotenal does not publicly acknowledge the online breach.

The group gave Lotenal 10 days to pay the ransom for the information obtained from the hacking, with the national lottery system declining to comment on the matter, only publicly saying that its computer systems were being updated.

“Apparently, the company does not understand the seriousness of the situation and wants to hide the fact that it was attacked and we stole data from its servers,” said Avaddon.

“What if we say we have a lot of sensitive data, such as sexual harassment in the workplace, nasty incidents and a lot of dirt associated with your company?”

Back in November 2019, Mexico’s current government administration was faced with another ransomware attack on the servers of the state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), which reportedly affected 5 percent of their servers.