Health Ministry Brazil’s said its website was hacked on December 10 by hackers causing several systems to crash, including one containing information about the national vaccination program.
According to Devdiscourse, the incident forced the Brazilian government to postpone a week to implement new health requirements for visitors to Brazil as a result of the attack. This caused some of their systems to fall into an unavailable state.
Police said they were investigating the attack. Meanwhile, the hackers behind the incident called Lapsus$Group posted a notice on the website saying that “internal data has been copied and deleted. Please contact us if you want to get your data back.” The content suggests this is the result of a ransomware attack.
Messages, including Telegram email and contact information, have now been deleted but the website remains down, while user data in the ConectSUS app that provides vaccination certificates to Brazilians is gone.
The department said it was working to restore its systems. At a press conference, Deputy Health Minister Rodrigo Cruz said their access to vaccination data has not yet been restored and it is too early to say whether the data will be lost.
The incident comes after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro objected to the use of vaccine passports and ordered unvaccinated travelers to Brazil to be quarantined for five days and tested for Covid- 19.