The General Staff of the Armed Forces was the target of an “unprecedented” cyberattack. Hundreds of secret and confidential documents, sent by NATO to Portugal, were found for sale on the Internet. The attack took place in August, and it is this Thursday released by Diário de Noticias (DN), who says that Prime Minister António Costa only found out about the case because he was informed by the US secret services.
The alert occurred when US intelligence agents detected hundreds of documents sent by NATO to Portugal for sale on the ‘darkweb’. The embassy in Lisbon communicated the situation directly to António Costa. At stake are secret and confidential documents of the Atlantic alliance diverted after a cyber attack that lasted over time and was carried out in a staggered manner.
Sources quoted by DN speak of an “extremely serious” and “unprecedented” attack in the country.
The Atlantic Alliance has already demanded explanations from the Portuguese Government and, next week, the Secretary of State for Digitization and Administrative Modernization and the director of the national security office will go to Brussels to meet at NATO headquarters.
The DN writes that the prime minister’s office assumed the management of this file, with the follow-up of several entities related to security, such as the Strategic Information Services for Defense and Security.
Experts are still trying to understand the magnitude of the attack, but the first indications suggest that the hackers would have accessed the computers of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the secret army and the General Directorate of National Defense Resources.
There would have been a breach of security regulations, since non-secure lines were used for the treatment of classified documents, instead of the integrated military communications system.
For DN, an official source from the Prime Minister’s office rejects that the image of Portugal could be affected. São Bento assures that “the government can guarantee that the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces work every day so that the credibility of Portugal, as a founding member of the Atlantic Alliance, remains intact”.
The source affirms that “the exchange of information between allies in matters of computer security is permanent at the bilateral and multilateral level.”
The Defense Minister also says that “all indications of attempted intrusion or possible security breaches are investigated.”
This is not the first time that Portugal has been involved in a NATO document security breach. Diário de Notícias recalls that it has already happened in the case of former spy Frederico Carvalhão Gil, convicted four years ago of spying for Russia.
Source: TSF
