Brazil’s Health Ministry website hacked overnight, remains offline

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Ministry of Health’s website (www.saude.gov.br/) suffered a hacker attack at dawn this Friday, December 10, and went offline. According to the message posted at the address, “internal data systems were copied and deleted.”

All of the Ministry’s portals, such as “Conecte SUS” and “Covid Portal” were also affected and cannot be accessed.

The Lapsus$ Group, which claims responsibility for the cyber attack, says that 50 terabytes of data have been removed from the system and are in its possession. “Please contact us if you would like your data returned,” reads the message on the website.

The website has suffered a “ransomware” attack, a hacker attack that is characterized by a system shutdown followed by a ransom demand for its release. In light of this, affected companies and agencies must make the difficult decision of whether or not to pay the hackers to resolve the disruption.

AIG, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, says it has seen a 150% increase in ransom and extortion requests between 2018 and 2020. Ransomware claims now account for 1 in 5 cyber insurance claims, the company added.

The attack occurred around 1 AM. About 2 hours later, the message went offline and the website is unavailable.

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