MIAMI (AP) – The cyber attack grew just as financial officials from across Latin America descended on Washington to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank.
On September 24, 2019, requests from more than 15,000 Internet addresses across China flooded the bank’s website, leaving some intermittently offline. To unblock the network, the bank took the drastic step of blocking all traffic coming from China.
But the attackers persisted, and as officials gathered at a conference day with famous athletes, academics, and chefs, the bombing intensified.
Details of the attack, which have not been previously reported, can be found in an internal IDB document reviewed by The Associated Press.
News of the attack comes just as the bank’s new president, Mauricio Claver-Carone, wants to take advantage of his faltering views on China from his time in the Trump administration to overtake those in Washington and beyond who were still smoking his elections to political office last year.
Claver-Carone, a former senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs on the National Security Council, chaired his first annual IDB meeting in Colombia last week since he was elected last fall by Democrats ‘and Democrats’ objections. some regional governments complained that it broke the long tradition. tradition of a Latin American being at the helm.
Claver-Carone, a geopolitical ideologue, is in no hurry to abandon his contempt for Beijing’s growing influence in the Washington Garden. In contrast to his predecessor, Luis Alberto Moreno of Colombia, who eagerly promoted Chinese investment in the region, Claver-Carone recently raised the possibility of inviting Taiwan, the island democracy claimed by the communist government in Beijing as part of its territory.
In reducing China’s influence, Claver-Carone seeks to favor Democrats who question his leadership but share his distrust of Beijing. If successful, they can help it meet what was the main commitment of its unorthodox candidacy: U.S. support for a capital increase so the bank can help the region emerge from a pandemic-induced recession. which is the worst in over a century.
There are early signs that it could be moving forward. This month, a bipartisan group of five lawmakers led by Sen. Bob Menendez, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed legislation to authorize a $ 80 billion capital increase that would increase loans to the Washington-based bank. in 60%.
“People have to accept that he won,” said Dan Runde, a former U.S. Agency for International Development official in the George W. Bush administration and an expert on multilateral institutions at the Center for Strategic Studies and International. “Those who are not happy have not yet gone through the five stages of pain. They are trapped somewhere between denial and anger.
But Sen. Patrick Leahy, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has yet to sign after warning last year that the election of Claver-Carone, a “polarizing American,” to lead the IDB it would harm – would not help – the case to increase funding. It is also hoped that some in the region who supported Claver-Carone when Trump took office – such as Brazil and Colombia – could change loyalty to appeal to the city’s new sheriff: President Joe Biden.
“The argument that an underfunded bank is an opportunity for China is very convincing,” said Dan Restrepo, who played the same role as the National Security Council as Claver-Carone during the Obama administration. “But it doesn’t respond to how well the bank finances itself and with what leadership.”
In terms of cyber disruptions, the attack on the IDB was too small to generate concern beyond the bank. Last year, more than 10 million similar distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were observed worldwide, according to digital security firm NETSCOUT.
But in the midst of the IDB gala celebration, it was full of symbolism.
The coup in Washington was rushed after the Trump administration, six months earlier, convened allies to force the cancellation of the IDB rally in the Chinese city of Chengdu, which was to be a celebration of China a decade after joining the bank.
While the United States had been trying to derail the meeting for months, China’s denial of a representative of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó gave it a chance to act decisively. Although the IDB and most nations in Latin America recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, China is a strong ally of President Nicolás Maduro
Claver-Carone was the American officer who propelled the diplomatic confrontation with China at the IDB. As a senior White House official in Latin America, he was also the architect of “America Rising,” a program that sought to curb China’s incursions into Latin America, where it has displaced the United States as the main trading partner of the countries. such as Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
According to the IDB document, on September 19, 2019, traffic to the IDB website increased to normal levels up to four times, forcing the main website and offline publications page. At first, the bank defended itself by blocking individual IP addresses.
But then, “the attackers changed tactics and began launching requests from more than 15,000 IP addresses spread across China,” according to the internal document. “On Tuesday evening, the whole of China’s revenue traffic was blocked, which allowed us to be online again.”
Without attacks, the attackers pivoted again, this time relying on 180,000 IP addresses from countries such as Singapore and Japan. In all, the attack lasted for months, but was effectively contained after three weeks, when the bank turned to Amazon to build a more robust firewall.
Although there are no indications that the site has been breached, “downtime affected our digital presence and had a negative impact on various communication efforts,” the document says. “It also made explicit our vulnerabilities to third parties, which could make us the target of further attacks and affect the IDB’s brand reputation.”
However, it is impossible to know who was behind the attack.
While China has some of the most skilled hackers in the world, security experts say that does not necessarily mean it is behind the attacks. Poorly protected computers can be hijacked and fixed from anywhere in the world and turned into botnets to trigger DDoS attacks.
“A long-term targeted attack has an obvious financial or political motive: don’t troll for three weeks,” said Tord Lundstrom, a digital security expert at Qurium, a Swedish non-profit organization. “But determining if China was behind it, or if someone is just trying to look like it was, is very difficult to determine without additional digital forensic information.”
China’s Foreign Ministry did not directly respond to questions about whether the government was aware of or involved in the incident at the IDB, but said in a statement that it strongly opposes cyberattacks.
“Linking cyber attacks directly to a government is a very sensitive political issue,” the ministry statement said. “All parties should jointly solve the problem of piracy through dialogue and cooperation and avoid politicizing the problem.”
Claver-Carone declined to be interviewed while the IDB said it does not comment on internal cybersecurity issues. However, three people from the bank told the AP that they recalled that China was openly blamed for the attack at 2019 briefings to discuss the consequences. People spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
On paper, China holds at least 0.004% of the IDB’s voting shares, the smallest share of any of the bank’s 48 members. But membership in China has been a cheap way to expand its reach in Latin America. Chinese companies can bid for IDB-funded projects, deal with political leaders, and grab valuable economic intelligence that would be harder to acquire on their own.
China is also the second non-borrowing shareholder in IDB Invest, the bank’s private lending bank, with nearly 6% of the shares, thanks to a reorganization in 2015 when the Obama administration refused to obtain additional resources. and saw U.S. share diluted to 13%.
The IDB also manages a $ 2 billion fund made up entirely of contributions from China. Over the years, the IDB also hosted more than a dozen business summits connecting Latin American entrepreneurs with Chinese investors.
“For too long, the IDB was too friendly with the Chinese Communist Party,” Runde said. “The Bank and its shareholders did not demand responsibility from China when it ruined the IDB’s 60th anniversary. This overly welcoming relationship needs to change. ”
China has not hidden its strained relationship with Claver-Carone. In a symbolic rebuke, Yi Gang, the head of China’s central bank, abstained from voting at last year’s special meeting when Claver-Carone was elected, according to a person who attended the meeting with the condition of anonymity to discuss behind closed doors. discussion.
Rebecca Ray, an economist at Boston University who tracks China’s investment in the region, said the delicate policy around China can be a double-edged sword. While Claver-Carone’s attempts to isolate Beijing may play out well in the U.S. Congress and help it raise additional funds, it could eventually end up undermining the IDB’s mission at a time of great need for funding to build infrastructure. improve health care and reduce poverty in the region.
He noted that as the IDB has lagged behind other multilateral institutions in securing more funding, three Latin American countries (Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay) have joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s response to the World Bank and the US’s opposition.
“Leaving China aside may end up limiting China’s willingness to continue to play an active role, which would not be popular in the region,” Ray said. “As long as the need for funding is high, countries will continue to turn to China because that’s where the money is.”
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Associated Press writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.
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Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman
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Contact the AP Global Research Team at [email protected]