The Attorney General for Lisbon has ordered the Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa website (www.pgdlisboa.pt) to be suspended ‘preemptively to ensure data protection’ after the site was attacked by Anonymous Portugal and the police that are investigating suggested that staff systems may be vulnerable.
The portal went off air on Saturday leaving an error message. It will be several days before any flaws in the hacked system have been identified and resolved, according to the Attorney General for Lisbon, Francisca Van Dunem.
"The website is nearly back to normal but we prefer to keep it off preventively. The computer technicians of the Public Ministry are determining what data was accessed and that any faults in the system are remedied," added Van Dunem.
The attack on Friday by Anonymous Portugal (http://anonymouspt.blogspot.pt/) was part of operation ‘National Blackout’ as shown on the group's Facebook page. Hackers gained access to the data held on 2,000 attorneys including their phone numbers and email addresses and made these public through the information sharing site AnonFiles.
The Attorney General's Office confirmed that a criminal investigation has been opened, "We're talking about the crimes of computer fraud and unlawful access. But we still do not know what data was accessed or if indeed there was unauthorised access," explained Van Dunem.
Although cybercrime is taken seriously, the Department of Investigation and Prosecution in Lisbon still only has one a computer expert.
The official admitted that this part of the system was weak but was keen to stress that the security of the system that manages legal processes was guaranteed safe. "The site system and the processes system are separate. There is no link between them."
Anonymous Portugal also has attacked the websites of political parties, parliament, and companies including EDP and Sonae. The group claimed it also had targeted the GNR and the PJ websites but these sites appear normal so far.
