A new cyber attack on the Brazilian Ministry of Health

The Brazilian Minister of Health said that there was a second cyber attack on the Ministry of Health, after the hacker attack last Friday.

“It was something smaller and we are working to recover as quickly as possible. That is the goal, we are working intensively here until everything is returned,” declared Marcelo Quiroga, on Monday, according to the local press.

“They are two different things. That first attack wasn’t an attack on the Ministry of Health, it was on the Imbratel level [empresa de telecomunicações e de rede de dados do Brasil] Fortunately, the data was not compromised.”

The new attack occurred between late Sunday and Monday.

And before the minister’s statements, the Ministry of Health indicated, in a statement, that the Datasos website [Departamento de Informática do Sistema Único de Saúde] It was conducting Preventive Maintenance on the Intranet.

Following Quiroga’s confirmation, the Institutional Security Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil announced, in a statement, that there had been “cyber incidents against government bodies” last Friday and that the executive was acting “in a coordinated manner to resume services, which are activated when treatment occurs”.

The stability of the “sites” will come “until tomorrow.” [terça-feira]Quiroga said.

The first attack occurred at dawn on Friday and was directed on the Brazilian Ministry of Health website and the application that contains all the data on vaccination against Covid-19 in the country, which led to the suspension of platforms.

The invasion of the system damaged the notification system of the National Immunization Program and the technical characteristics that prevent the issuance of the Brazilian national vaccination certificate against Covid-19, among other data, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.

Various local media reported that the attack was carried out by the “Lapsos” group, which claimed responsibility for the crime in a message posted “on the Internet”.

With the damage caused by the hacker attack, millions of Brazilians have been unable to obtain the digital certificate of vaccination against Covid-19, which is necessary to access public places in a large part of the country as well as to travel abroad.