Moscow, August 22 (RHC) -– The director of the Investigation and Analysis Team with Kaspersky Lab, Dmitry Bestuzhev, denounced an espionage campaign aimed at military institutions, government agencies and embassies of Latin American countries, which kicked off in 2010.

Bestushev made his denunciation at the 4th Latin American Summit of Security Analysts hosted by Colombia, according to an article published on Cubadebate website.

Named “Machete,” the campaign was detected following the analysis of a virus code and it affected Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and  Cuba, but also other countries like Spain, Sweden, China, Germany, the United States, Belgium, France and Malaysia. The attacks on Russia targeted Latin American embassies.
The program infected computers working on Windows, OSX and Linux and collected all the information written and kept on infected PCs, as well as audio, photos and others.

The expert said that the hackers have not yet been identified though some clues point to the government of a Latin American country that could benefit with some documents related to military intelligence in general, as well as the movement of diplomats and government decisions, which have not been released by the spied countries.