Brazil health ministry website hit by hacker attack, systems down; vaccination data targeted

Due to the incident, the government postponed the implementation of additional health standards for visitors coming in Brazil for a week.

Brazil's health ministry said Friday that a hacker assault took down multiple systems, including one that contained information on the national immunisation programme and another that issued digital vaccination certificates. Due to the incident, the government postponed the implementation of additional health standards for visitors coming in Brazil for a week.
In a statement, the ministry said an incident occurred in the early hours of Friday that briefly disrupted certain of its system. Police stated they were looking into the attack.

The accused hackers, who go by the moniker "Lapsus$ Group," placed a statement on the website claiming that internal data had been copied and erased. In an apparent ransomware assault, it read, "Contact us if you want the data back." The letter, which contained e-mail and Telegram contact information, had been withdrawn by Friday afternoon. Still, the site page remained down, and user data in the ConectSUS app, which delivers immunisation certificates to Brazilians, had vanished.

The ministry stated that it attempted to get its systems back up and running. Deputy Health Minister Rodrigo Cruz stated during a press briefing that access to vaccination data had not been restored by Friday evening. Cruz stated that it was too early to determine if the data had been lost.

Unvaccinated passengers arriving in Brazil will be quarantined for five days and tested for COVID-19, according to steps agreed on on Tuesday after President Jair Bolsonaro rejected using a vaccination passport. The rule was supposed to go into effect on Saturday. Still, the government announced it would be delayed for a week since immunisation data was not available online following the incident. COVID-19 tracking forms for incoming airline passengers were still available on the non-targeted website of health regulator Anvisa.