The mobile number of the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, is available to users attracted by the sinister part of the internet, known as the dark web. You will also be able to find personal data of the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Both appear on the list of almost 1.5 million clients of the Portuguese airline TAP who have seen private information exposed, such as their address, telephone number or email, after the massive dissemination of company files carried out by a group of cybercriminals. called Ragnar Locker. The information was published this Friday by the weekly Expresso, which cites among those affected the director of the Information and Security Service, Adélio Neiva da Cruz; the leader of the far-right Chega party, André Ventura.
The President of the Republic reported in a statement that he had been warned about the leak of his private data by “a citizen who had access to them.” In the note he explains that he took some precautions “in relation to the only data that is not widely known: email.”
The Ragnar Locker group announced this week that it had released the personal data of 1.5 million TAP customers, in response to the airline’s refusal to accept its extortion to avoid it. “TAP has done nothing to protect their customers’ data and in an attempt to hide the truth, they even attacked our resources and our reasonable solution for a serious company,” the cybercriminals said in a statement. Neither the pirates nor the company have reported the money required to prevent dissemination, but the executive president of the TAP, Christine Ourmiéres-Widener, has made it clear that they do not accept the demands of the group. “We do not want to negotiate nor are we willing to reward this behavior in any way and we hope that you will support us in this ethical attitude”,
In a meeting with the foreign press held on Thursday in Lisbon, Christine Ourmiéres-Widener pointed out that they cannot determine the exact number of clients affected by the data theft and that the estimates of 1.5 million given by Ragnar Locker may be uncertain. The meeting, which was also attended by EL PAÍS, was held before it became known that the prime minister and other politicians were among those harmed by the attack.
The assault on the TAP computer system occurred at the end of August. The group of cybercriminals already exposed data from 115,000 clients on the network to show that their action had been successful. Among the information he aired were telephone numbers, addresses, the content of emails from company employees and confidential information. The Portuguese Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into the intrusion in which the Judicial Police and the National Cybersecurity Center also participate.
In June 2020, the same group of hackers attacked the Portuguese electricity company EDP and claimed 10 million euros after blocking its computer systems. The company assured that it never paid the extortion. Portugal has been suffering from computer attacks targeting its main institutions and companies for months. One of the most recent, reported by the Diário de Notícias, affected secret NATO documents sent to Portugal and stolen during a cyberattack on the General Staff of the Armed Forces, which went on sale on the dark web.
Also this year, the Vodafone Portugal network suffered an intrusion by hackers that caused a blackout that prevented making voice calls and sending SMS for an hour to four million customers, including strategic organizations such as the National Institute of Medical Emergency, some services fire departments, banks, courts and post offices.
