700 Gigabytes and a Guy Fawkes Mask: How Uruguay's Cyber Silence Led to the BHU Catastrophe

The source provides a forensic and geopolitical analysis of two major cyber incidents in Uruguay, contrasting the official institutional narratives with the detailed technical perspectives of security expert Alberto Hill. The document argues that the flawed 2017 conviction of Hill, based on questionable evidence and a lack of cyber literacy by law enforcement, established a precedent of narrative control that minimized technical dissent. This systemic failure contributed directly to the 2025 cyber crisis at the state-owned Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay (BHU), where authorities characterized a massive 700GB data theft and extortion by the group Crypto24 merely as a generic "computer incident." The analysis uses both cases to illustrate a critical governance and public confidence crisis stemming from the country's refusal to acknowledge and transparently address sophisticated cyber threats to its Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).