The U.S. accused CIBanco of providing financial services to Those cartels include the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Gulf Cartel. (File photo)
A United States cybersecurity firm has revealed that a cyber attack took place last week against a Mexican bank, although the bank says the attack was unsuccessful and no information was extracted.
Cyble, Inc. disclosed that CIBanco’s systems had been infected by REvil ransomware. The attackers had released some of the data collected but were threatening to sell the remainder, which purportedly included sensitive information about the bank’s employees and customer accounts and passwords, if a ransom payment were not made.
After customers noted an interruption in service and complained on social media of not having access to their accounts for six days last week, CIbanco released a statement on Monday saying that “we made the decision to suspend the bank’s services and applications preventively following security protocols.” The bank said the hack was not successful.
“The bank’s security protocols worked against massive and repetitive attacks. The operating systems were not compromised.”
Cyble posted a message appearing to be from the attackers on Twitter.
“People who don’t care about their reputation, lie to their clients, and are silent about hacking and data leak. Bank users lose money from their accounts, they cannot pay bills and loans, and the management continues to lie about ‘problems in the system. If you do not contact us, we will begin to publish your data.”
One account holder told Mexico News Daily last week that he had been unable to make transfers from his account for several days. He said the bank told him that it was having systems problems due to heavy rainfall.
The bank has 3,300 employees and assets of 12.24 billion pesos (US $557 million).
A recent study by cybersecurity firm Infosecurity reports that between February and April alone, cyber attacks on financial institutions worldwide have increased by 238%, with ransomware being the most popular method used.
“Ransomware groups used to simply encrypt their victims’ data, but since November last year they have also been stealing it. They use the threat of releasing or, in the case of REvil, auctioning off the stolen data as an additional lever to extort payment,” says Brett Callow, a threat analyst at New Zealand-based software firm Emsisoft.
“And the most you can hope to receive is a pinky promise that the stolen data will be deleted, but why would criminals delete something that they can make money with?”
REvil ransomware software, also known as Sodinokibi, was first detected in 2019 and has stolen data from foreign exchange company Travelex and celebrity law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks whose clients include Lady Gaga, Drake and Madonna.
In June, operators of the REvil ransomware launched a dark web auction site for data sets that mimics eBay, accepting bids in cybercurrency to ensure anonymity. Thus far their average extortion demand is around US $260,000, and they threaten failure to pay will result in auctioning off the data to the highest bidder.
Lakes have formed in Hopelchen where before there were none. Everardo Chablé Huehuet
On June 1, Tropical Storm Cristóbal made landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula, bringing with it torrential rain that caused major flooding in dozens of Maya communities across the region.
Settling over Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán state, the deluge destroyed crops and beehives, killed livestock, and forced people to evacuate.
Twenty-nine-year-old Everardo Chablé Huehuet – a representative of the Colectivo de Comunidades Mayas de los Chenes, a group of beekeeping and agricultural communities in Campeche – told Mexico News Daily that his community had been badly affected by the flooding.
“When the storm started and the rains began, we didn’t know that it was going to be a catastrophe, like a hurricane. It was raining for a week but we couldn’t imagine that we were going to be inundated and have areas that formed like lakes,” he said.
More than two months later and communities like Chablé’s are still struggling in the aftermath of this regional disaster.
The municipalities to receive the highest amount of rainfall in Campeche included Candelaria, Ciudad del Carmen, Calakmul, and Hopelchén, where Chablé lives.
Some 70% of people in the Hopelchén municipality make their living from beekeeping. They manage native stingless species and practice apiculture, the management of European honey bees.
Many people in Chablé’s town of Chan-Chen, which is a community of apiculturists more than 100 kilometers from the municipal capital of Hopelchén, lost their livelihoods.
“There are people who lost more than 100 hives, and there are people who lost 20. A large amount has been lost and it is so difficult to recover [the hives]. People have been working for years as beekeepers, for 20, 15, and 10 years they have worked, and then they lost their hives overnight,” he said.
The beekeeper explained that as the honey was due to be harvested, many people suddenly lost their income and are now struggling to pay for day-to-day expenses.
Chablé noted that there are towns in other communities where as many as 600 beehives were destroyed.
Flooded beehives in Campeche. Everardo Chablé Huehuet
In early June, a group of 71 civil society organizations and academics carried out a preliminary investigation across the peninsula for a damage assessment and needs analysis.
It found that 4,259 hives had been lost in Campeche; there were 14,748 before the storm.
Reliant upon growing traditional crops on small family plots known as milpas, Maya communities in Hopelchén also suffered a heavy loss of squash plants.
Chablé explained that this loss was compounded by the fact that water ruined the communities’ corn harvest when it flooded the trojes, small traditional wooden structures used to store the corn.
Communities in Quintana Roo have also suffered because of Cristóbal.
The damage report indicated that areas that were badly impacted included José María Morelos, portions of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Tulum, Puerto Morelos, Benito Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas, and communities west of Bacalar.
Isaí Castillo Hernández, 29, lives in the small rural community of David Gustavo Gutiérrez Ruiz, which is located about 50 kilometers west of Bacalar in the municipality of Othon P. Blanco.
Castillo said: “I think what impacted us the most about this storm was the loss of our crops. There was serious damage. Many people who had crops such as corn, lemon, orange and other types of fruit trees lost absolutely everything.
“My grandfather, for example, had a large cornfield but when the flood came everything went into the water. All was lost with the water. We tried to recover some orange plants but nothing could be done.
“Some people also lost animals, such as sheep and cows, chickens, pigs, and turkeys, on their ranches.”
The access road to David Gustavo Gutiérrez Ruiz was washed away by the rains. Castillo explained that when a pregnant woman urgently needed medical care, the government had to send a helicopter to take her to hospital.
The community has received support from the government in the form of food packages, while in Hopelchén basic necessities and medicine have been handed out by civil society groups.
Aerial view of flooding in Hopelchen. Everardo Chablé Huehuet
According to the damage study, the situation facing Maya beekeeping and agricultural communities impacted by the floods is urgent because any savings or resources families had were exhausted by the coronavirus pandemic. When the assessment was carried out, at least 15% of families in those communities urgently needed food support.
In Gustavo Gutiérrez Ruiz, many people who were working in tourism and providing a much-needed income for their families had lost their jobs because of the pandemic.
Chablé also said that the situation is complicated by the Covid-19 crisis, with cases rising in Hopelchén.
“Infections are going up very fast. We are talking about a figure of 100 infected people here in Hopelchén, when at the beginning of the end of May there were only two. It is worrying for the communities because they do not have a working Covid-19 protocol,” he said.
He added that it was a concern for communities because they lack adequate information about the virus in their native Yucatec Maya language.
As well as being impacted by flooding and Covid-19, Maya communities in the peninsula are facing environmental threats, one of which might have worsened the effects of the flooding.
According to a 2015 study, Hopelchén is a major deforestation hotspot on the peninsula because of the recent expansion of commercial agriculture, particularly by Mennonite communities.
Chablé suggested that the flooding was particularly severe as a result.
“We have never seen flooding like this before. Hurricane Isidoro happened 18 years ago here in Hopelchén and there were floods, but not like this. We are not talking about a hurricane, but about a storm that has impacted us with the force of a hurricane,” he said.
For Chan-Chen, David Gustavo Gutiérrez Ruiz and other affected communities, recovery from the floods is likely to be slow.
Castillo explained that until the water has fully receded, people in his community cannot return to their daily activities.
Chablé said that in Hopelchén they are also waiting for the water to go down — it has only abated by a few centimeters due to the rainy season.
The beekeeper added that residents believe it could take up to a year for the water to recede completely.
The killing of a University of Guadalajara student who was found shot to death in Zapopan — the 16th student to suffer a violent death since 2014 — is now being investigated as a possible hate crime.
Police found the body of Jonathan Alberto Santos, 24, around 7 a.m. Tuesday on a street in the Balcones de la Cantera neighborhood. Jalisco prosecutors are gathering evidence to determine whether the murder was a hate crime against Santos, who was a member and activist of the LGBTQ community.
Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solis said the authorities will also continue to pursue the possibility that it was a crime of passion or related to robbery.
The death has sparked calls among students at the university for solutions to violence in Guadalajara and for justice in Santos’s killing.
A woman identifying herself as Santos’s cousin said her family was unaware of any previous incidents in which Santos was targeted for violence.
“Everywhere he went, he was accepted as he was,” she said.
A local campus student organization, the University Students Federation (FEU), has encouraged demonstrators to congregate Friday evening at the governor’s residence, Casa Jalisco.
“We will keep fighting to demand justice for each student, for each one of our rights, and for every freedom. We will not rest until there is justice,” the organization posted on Twitter.
On his personal Twitter account on the day of Santos’s death, FEU president Javier Armenta linked the killing to many other murders of students and young people.
“Yet again, one of our fellow students has been a victim of violence and insecurity … What more is needed to stop these losses?”
In addition to the 16 students murdered in the last six years, another eight have disappeared.
A federal judge has sentenced the ex-leader of the Reynosa, Tamaulipas, wing of the Gulf Cartel to 28 years in prison for organized crime and possession of illegal weapons.
At the height of his power, Juan Óscar “El Barbas” Garza Azuarato was considered one of the principal drug traffickers between Reynosa and McAllen, Texas. His crime cell was also involved in human trafficking in collaboration with other criminal organizations in Chiapas and Tabasco, weapons sales and extortion of Reynosa businesses.
According to a U.S. Senate report from 2011 on drug trafficking organizations in Mexico, the Gulf Cartel is one of the oldest cartels in Mexico and was the most powerful crime gang when former president Felipe Calderón began his war on drug cartels in 2006 and used the military to capture or kill 25 of the 37 most wanted drug lords in Mexico.
Garza was also fined 315,026 pesos (US $14,310).
It was the second time Garza has been sentenced. He was sentenced to prison in 2010, but an appeals court overturned that decision and ordered a new trial, which resulted in the new, 28-year sentence.
Virus transmission has intensified since the end of lockdown.
July was Mexico’s worst month yet for new cases of the coronavirus with an average of 6,404 reported every day.
El Universal reported that 198,548 new infections occurred in July, the equivalent of 266 people testing positive for Covid-19 every hour.
Case numbers set new daily records on four days during the month. On July 18, 7,615 new cases were reported followed by 8,438 on July 23. July 30 saw numbers surge by 7,730, and on July 31 there were 8,458 new cases.
The Ministry of Health said the surges in cases were due to the way information was uploaded to government platforms and didn’t reflect the actual number of new cases recorded each day.
So far August case numbers are slightly below those of July. During the first 13 days, 81,114 new infections were recorded with a record-breaking 9,556 occurring on August 1 alone. The daily average has been 6,239, a couple of hundred below July’s figures.
Coronavirus cases as of Thursday. milenio
Several experts say the spike in numbers over the past two months is a consequence of the easing of stay-at-home measures that occurred in mid-June.
For Malaquías López Cervantes of the National Autonomous University’s (UNAM) faculty of medicine, the correlation between the end of lockdown and a surge in cases in deaths is logical. The country, he says, was simply reopened too early.
“The population took few precautions because they were given poor instructions, masks were ignored and it was said that they should leave their homes without fear,” he said. “There are consequences. Transmission has intensified.”
López says the government chose the recovery of the economy over recovery from the pandemic.
“I think the economy has been favored and the importance of health has been neglected, and that is leading to very bad results.”
Because some improvement has been seen in Mexico City and some other locations, he said, it is assumed that the situation is easing, which is not the case.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
“Infections are moving to other places perhaps [because] they have less geopolitical visibility.”
Alejandro Macías, a member of UNAM’s coronavirus commission and a frequent critic of the federal government’s coronavirus strategy, agrees that high infection rates are spreading to other regions of the country with similar intensity to the virus’s initial growth in Mexico City.
“Now that Monterrey, Guadalajara, parts of the Bajío and other cities are added, the epidemic will come to the entire republic,” he said
Rodolfo de la Torre, director of social development at the Espinosa Yglesias think tank, observed that the handling of the pandemic has strayed from its original goal, and the federal government should reconsider its strategy.
“It seems that the objective was lost, which was to reduce infections and deaths. The authorities underestimated the population’s vulnerability to infection and death,” he says. Mexico’s health system was weak from the onset, testing has been inadequate and the use of masks has not been emphasized enough.
UNAM’s López took Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell to task for not making masks mandatory.
“The deputy minister talks about not forcing Mexicans to wear face masks, but I think that more pressure should be put on the population. What [he] says is silly, because it seems that he defends the right to infect,” he said. “In an extraordinary situation rights have to be adapted to protect the population as much as possible.”
López-Gatell criticized lawmakers in Colima this week for proposing stiff punishments for not wearing a face mask, warning that such measures could lead to human rights abuses by authorities and social tension among citizens.
There were 7,371 new cases reported on Thursday, bringing the total to 505,751. The day’s death tally was 627; the accumulated total is now 55,293.
A wedding in Guanajuato where few coronavirus prevention measures were being observed.
Morelos is currently orange on the national risk level stoplight map but one wouldn’t know it for all the secret weddings and other events going on in the city of Jiutepec in violation of the state’s social distancing regulations.
According to the newspaper Milenio, large social gatherings are going on repeatedly in the municipality and authorities have given up trying to shut them down.
One such event was an outdoor wedding involving about 150 people last Saturday.
In video footage, wedding guests are crowded together, drinking and dancing to live music and few are wearing face masks. Milenio said organizers did not take participants’ temperature to check for signs of Covid-19 infection and that attempts to call 911 and have authorities attend were ignored.
The report also claimed that 911 services have given up responding to such calls in the face of so many social events going on.
Party venues and musical groups are quietly offering their services despite pandemic restrictions, which will only be eased once the state moves to yellow on the coronavirus risk map.
Owners of event facilities admitted to advertising for customers despite the regulations.
Jiutepec officials later told Milenio that local Civil Protection head Francisco Javier Barona Téllez went to check on Saturday’s wedding but was not successful in shutting it down.
Meanwhile, a wedding in Guanajuato, also on Saturday, cost the facility in which it was held a fine of 25,000 pesos (US $1,135). Officials were alerted to a party at the Centro Fox, a facility in San Francisco del Rincón operated by former president Vicente Fox and his wife.
They found that coronavirus protocols were not being observed.
With the government having clamped down on fuel theft, criminals in Guanajuato and Querétaro are increasingly turning to freight trains.
Last year an average of two railcars were robbed each week, but in the first six months of 2020 that number has increased to three per day, the newspaper Reforma reports.
The shift in targets is likely due to the pressure inflicted on the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, notorious for fuel theft in the area. Its leader, José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, alias El Marro, was arrested on August 2 on charges of kidnapping, organized crime and fuel theft after an 18-month manhunt.
Freight companies and cargo transportation experts have identified hot spots for train robberies in Mexico’s Bajío central lowlands region: El Ahorcado in Querétaro and Empalme Escobedo and Apaseo El Alto and Apaseo El Grande in Guanajuato.
The exact number of train robberies that have occurred is unknown, as many go unreported, said security expert Marcos Solórzano Cataño, and the problem is not likely to go away anytime soon. Fuel thieves have the infrastructure and the protection of local residents already in place, making the transition from gas to cargo relatively easy.
Solórzano said thieves mainly target train cars carrying auto parts, grains, seeds, consumer goods and construction material.
Nationally, the number of train robberies has been declining. In 2016, 9,042 train robberies were reported whereas the first three months of 2020 have seen just 1,306.
The majority of train robberies occur in Puebla, Veracruz and Tlaxcala, government officials say.
Jorge Camacho has written the book on coronavirus survival.
Looking for a common sense guide to surviving a coronavirus diagnosis without going to the hospital? Meet Jorge Camacho Treviño, a man who wrote the book on it.
In an interview with news agency EFE, the Mexican engineer and teacher pointed out that his 11-step guide to navigating the disease was born out of his desire to fight the coronavirus from home.
Camacho is 50. He has high blood pressure, diabetes and is overweight, factors he knew put him at high risk for complications. He is also on a fixed income and worried his treatment might drain his bank account.
But he was determined to recover. So this admitted fan of survival stories about those who have conquered adversity decided to write his own.
With Mexico poised to surpass 500,000 cases, and after more than 56,000 people have died, Camacho hopes his guide will help others defeat the disease.
Camacho’s virus survival guide.
The document (in Spanish) is available as a free download on the Facebook page “Camacho vs Covead.”
“Every Mexican who has my guide in his hands and follows the 11 steps is very likely to succeed and spend less money than in a hospital,” he said.
The measures Camacho proposes are:
Remain in regular contact with family members and the doctor. This helps keep the patient calm and puts the body in optimal condition to fight the virus.
Obtain medical equipment to measure body temperature, blood oxygen levels and blood pressure.
Keep a precise record of symptoms by day and time and also make a note of all vital signs. This will help you track the progress of the disease and whether it is safe to remain at home.
If your blood oxygen level drops below 90%, lie on your stomach and measure it again after 30 minutes when it is likely you will obtain a normal reading. Stay in bed as much as possible, and sleep on your stomach.
Stay home as much as possible and wear a mask at all times to avoid infecting family members. Designate just one person to help you with meals and medicine, and always maintain sanitary measures and keep at a safe distance.
There is no reason why you should not receive the best medical care available because your symptoms will be complicated. If you can’t afford to pay for your care, ask a relative for help. (Camacho estimates his treatment cost him 25,000 pesos, or US $1,125.)
Whether you meet with your doctor in his or her office or via Zoom, WhatsApp or FaceTime, describe all of your symptoms in detail including the day, time, intensity and frequency.
Eat healthily and make sure you get a lot of green vegetables and citrus fruits. Take vitamins if you have a loss of appetite as this can help boost your immune system. Keep up to date with new information on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the economy.
Quit drinking soda. Drink water and electrolyte solutions instead.
If you lose your appetite, eat canned foods, powdered smoothies or your favorite nutritional drinks such as Ensure or Glucerna.
Get all the lab and medical tests needed to provide your doctor with the information they need.
Camacho cautions that people can be unknowing carriers of the disease, as he tested negative for the coronavirus several times before the results came back positive. He also recommended that patients keep their minds occupied and avoid thinking negative thoughts.
Forty-two days after he first started showing symptoms, Camacho still struggles with consequences of the disease, including muscle fatigue and a persistent cough, but he is coronavirus free.
So far, his guide has been shared more than 1,200 times. “Thank you very much for taking the time to share information that can help someone else and for thinking about all people,” wrote one grateful Facebook user. “I wish you to recover 100% of your health and that you can serve as an example and inspiration to many people who need a light of hope in these times.”
Assuming it passes successfully through the Phase 3 trials it is currently undergoing, a Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford in the U.K. and licensed to the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca will be packaged for Latin American distribution at Mexican laboratories, thanks to a deal between the pharmaceutical and the Carlos Slim Foundation.
Mexico’s role will be to package the 150 million to 250 million doses of the vaccine to be distributed in the region. AstraZeneca already has facilities in Argentina.
According to Argentine President Alberto Fernández, who announced the deal today, the agreement will assure Latin American access to the vaccine as soon as it becomes publicly available, possibly in the first six months of 2021.
“What this agreement makes possible is that Latin America, and particularly Argentina, will be able to have access to the vaccine six to 12 months before we would have had access to it had we not been able to make this agreement,” he said.
“AstraZeneca recognizes the urgency of the worldwide pandemic and will work in alliance with partners for the distribution of the vaccine in an egalitarian format,” the Slim Foundation said in a press release. “AstraZeneca is working with strategic partners in Latin America, including Argentina and Mexico, taking advantage of its capacity to facilitate the early availability of the potential vaccine.”
Fernández said the vaccines will be distributed fairly between the Latin American countries that request it. AstraZeneca has promised that the vaccine will be affordable, at only a few dollars a dose, and it does not expect to profit from it during the pandemic.
The vaccine’s trials with human volunteers are currently taking place in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa and are scheduled to begin in the U.S. this month. Early clinical results have made AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which uses a weakened version of a common-cold virus, one of the leading candidates to be launched globally, with researchers reporting that it is safe and creates antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus with minimal side effects. The shot is expected to provide protection for about a year, probably using a two-dose delivery system.
President López Obrador said Thursday the government has allocated 25 billion pesos (US $1.12 billion) for the vaccine to make it free and universal.
“All Mexicans are going to have access to the vaccine, and there should be no need for the poor to worry,” he said.
After Oaxaca banned the sale of junk food and sugary drinks to minors on August 5, at least 10 states and Mexico City have expressed an interest in following suit.
Oaxaca’s new law, which imposes fines and even jail time for anyone — other than parents — who provide unhealthy packaged foods to children under the age of 18, effectively putting junk food in the same category as alcohol and cigarettes.
The measure is seeing support from across Mexico, and across party lines.
A day after the law was approved in Oaxaca, the governor of Tabasco, Adán Augusto López, stated that he would present a similar initiative, although he has yet to do so.
“We must return as much as possible to [eating] traditional food, and we must start with the children so that they are educated,” López said.
In Colima, the Morena party put forward a bill in Congress banning not just the sale of foods high in fat, sodium or sugar to children, but also the advertising of such products in schools.
On August 10, Chihuahua jumped on board with an initiative New Alliance Deputy René Frías Bencomo, a former teacher, presented to Congress.
“It is intended that the sellers and vendors of these products receive administrative sanctions in case of incurring any fault, leaving the responsibility for the consumption of said products in the hands of parents and guardians,” Frías said. “It is alarming that Mexico ranks first in childhood obesity worldwide and second in obesity in adults. At the national level, Chihuahua is in first place in childhood obesity,” he wrote in his proposal.
Nuevo León’s Congressional Health Commission and members of the Morena party are working on a series of separate initiatives addressing junk food which would amend the state health law, a law on children’s rights and the law to prevent obesity.
“It is more expensive for the state to invest in hospitals and drugs than in prevention. We are not saying that the products are going to end, no one says that, but rather that minors do not consume these products, and they are not easily within their reach,” Deputy Luis Armando Torres stated.
The health commission is also seeking to limit the advertising of junk food.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed that a proposal similar to the one approved in Oaxaca is being considered for the nation’s capital, where six out of 10 children are overweight or obese.
Lawmakers in Hidalgo, Sonora, Guanajuato, Puebla, Baja California Sur and Guerrero are also considering following suit, as is Tamaulipas where support for such an initiative has crossed party lines, receiving the backing of both National Action Party (PAN) and Morena representatives.
Federal legislators from four different political parties planned to propose a nationwide ban today on the sale and marketing of junk food to children.
