RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “All data was successfully recovered,” the Ministry said in a statement, adding that it is now working to restore the systems for registering and issuing vaccination certificates “as soon as possible.”
Friday morning’s hacker attack disabled several Ministry of Health systems, including information from the National Immunization Program, ConecteSUS and the program for issuing digital vaccination certificates.
On Friday, the Ministry of Health said it had managed to recover most of the affected systems, but the data related to vaccination records were only recovered on Sunday.
Hackers left a message in the attack, seen by anyone accessing the website, saying that the internal data had been copied and deleted. “Contact us if you want your data back,” the text read, with email and Telegram contacts.
Because of the attack, the Ministry decided to postpone by one week the implementation of new rules to enter the country by air travel, which would have come into force on Saturday, requiring either proof of full vaccination or a 5-day quarantine for non-vaccinated travelers.
However, Federal Supreme Court (STF) Justice Luís Roberto Barroso on Saturday ordered the requirement for proof of vaccination for travelers coming to Brazil from abroad, alerting to the threat of promoting “anti-vaccine tourism” due to the lack of action by the federal government. The relevant government ministries met Sunday to discuss issuing new regulations complying with the decision.