Cybercrime in Brazil’s Health Ministry: everyone’s data was compromised, says expert

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Friday, December 10, Brazilian Association for Cybersecurity chairman Hiago Kim discussed the hacker attack against the Ministry of Health’s system. Among the consequences, the specialist cited the compromising of all accessed citizens’ data.

Kim said that data from millions of Brazilians can be used for scams, most of which are financially related.

“The type of crime is usually against fraud in the financial system, crime against credit, requesting credit cards on behalf of people, the whole database. As it was an attack that compromised access to the server, probably all data of citizens there were compromised,” Kim said.

The Ministry of Health’s website (www.saude.gov.br/) was hacked in the early hours of Friday and went offline. According to the message posted at the address, “internal data systems were copied and deleted.”

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

Hiago Kim said that people should start asking about what is tested and what is safe to all structure owners and managers, including the government.

“Asking the government what security tests are performed, what mechanisms validate the system’s security, the people need to ask and understand. Just as you enter an online store today, you wonder if it is safe; this must also happen with any website, including public ones,” the expert noted.

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