‘Hacker influenced outcome of Mexican elections’

Colombian hacker Andrés Sepúlveda claims he was paid in 2012 to ensure that a certain candidate would win the Mexican election. He used malware to eavesdrop on opponents and deployed Twitter bots.

Sepúlveda is currently in prison for carrying out hacks during Colombia’s 2014 presidential election and told his elaborate story to Bloomberg. In it he claims that in 2012 he received an amount of 600,000 dollars to influence the outcome of the Mexican elections, which is the equivalent of 527,000 euros. He should have ensured that candidate Peña Nieto emerged as the winner. His budget would come from a political consultant from Venezuela, who operated out of Miami.

He then used the money to gather a team of hackers and infect the computers and telephones of parties of political opponents with malware. This gave him access to agendas and speeches as they were being written. He also had access to BlackBerry, Apple and Android phones using Russian software, which he claims bought for the equivalent of $44,000.

Sepúlveda is said to have used another part of his budget to purchase a number of Twitter accounts that were at least a year old. He used these to influence opinions on important topics such as drug violence. He also had a small army of 30,000 Twitter bots at his disposal, with which he could create trending topics. Another claim is that he called tens of thousands of voters in a major constituency at 3 a.m. with pre-recorded messages on behalf of a political opponent, to inflict damage on them.

The activities in Mexico would only be a small part of the assignments that the Colombian has carried out in South America.

Back of Sepúlveda’s head, the qr code would contain an encryption key