The Cyber Defense eMagazine January Edition for 2024

Drill Down: Why Target Governments?
Ransomware groups target governments for several reasons. First, governments collect and store
valuable data on their citizens and have large budgets. This makes them potentially lucrative targets for
financial gain. Second, they own and run sensitive critical infrastructure. Attacking governments allows
ransomware groups to disrupt critical services with the resulting chaos potentially exerting political
pressure to pay ransoms. And of course, some threat actors have political or ideological agendas, and
governments represent easy and symbolic targets for local or regional vendettas.
To better understand the motives of Ransom-War threat actors, we analyzed the above-mentioned Costa
Rica attack more in-depth. Costa Rica is, after all, a popular tourist destination and not generally
considered a country with overbearing or extended political reach. So why would Conti have chosen to
launch an attack against such an unassuming country?
• Theory 1 – The attack was simply a crime of opportunity. Attackers were looking for vulnerabilities
or weaknesses and struck when they found them in the Costa Rican government’s systems.
• Theory 2 - Owing to the sensitive timing of the attack (immediately following the transition of power
following a national election), it was an attempt to destabilize the country or overthrow it
altogether.
• Theory 3 - Based on internal Conti communications, the attack may have been a smokescreen
created to remind the public of the group’s prominence and lucrative attack prowess.
• Theory 4 - Since Costa Rica publicly rejected the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Conti was
aligned with Russia, the motivation was political.
Understanding the motives of ransomware groups that target governments is crucial for devising effective
strategies to combat and mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks on governments.
What Can Governments and Their IT Service Providers Do?
It is common for attackers to target companies providing IT services to governments, as they may be less
secure.
While having backups in place can mitigate the need to pay for a decryption key, it does not prevent
ransomware attacks from occurring against government agencies or entities. To establish robust
government cybersecurity, it is crucial to implement preventive measures and proactively counter threats.
Some actions companies providing services to governments can offer:
• Limit publicity over governmental projects - this is particularly important in foreign media outlets
in foreign languages.
• Decentralize public and external digital assets so that if attackers are familiar with one IP/domain,
they can’t know everything within the public domain
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