Vodafone Portugal was hit by a hack that shut down 4G/5G broadband networks, SMS text, and television services across the nation. Vodafone described the cyberattack as “a deliberate and malicious attack intended to cause damage.”
The attack primarily targets data network provisioning, including 4G/5G networks, fixed voice, SMS, television, and voice/digital answering services. For the time being, only the 3G network (max 3MB/sec) is operational, and as the warning says, reinstating the other services would take time and effort. Vodafone Portugal has almost four million mobile users and another 3.4 million home and business internet customers. Thus, the hack has had a significant impact.
“The in-depth investigation of the criminal act to which we were subjected will continue indefinitely and with the involvement of the competent authorities,” reads the translated announcement. “We have no evidence to date that Customer data has been accessed and/or compromised.”
While Vodafone has not released any information about the incident, researchers in the threat intelligence community think it was a ransomware attack. Further queries were sent to Vodafone Portugal and the Vodafone Group, but no response was obtained.
The Cofina group, which owns many media outlets in Portugal, recently experienced a devastating ransomware attack from the Lapsus$ organization, a relatively young cybercrime gang. According to local reports, the firm’s websites returned online on Sunday, more than a month after the attacks.
The websites have been completely redesigned in many situations, indicating that the locked systems are unrecoverable. The same cannot be said for Impresa, another of Portugal’s most renowned media firms, which was also hit by ransomware in January 2022 and whose main site is still down.
