Brazil – Prefeitura do Rio
The Prefeitura do Rio posted an announcement on its website about a cyberattack. In machine translation, it reads:
Rio’s City Hall systems suffered a hacker attack in the early hours of Monday, 08/15. All services of the City Hall Portal were preventively taken offline to ensure data protection.
We are working to mitigate the inconvenience caused to cariocas and to get our systems back to normal as soon as possible. The crime was registered at the Police Department for Repression of Computer Crimes so that the person responsible can be identified and punished.
The full announcement identifies how various government functions have been affected.
An update was posted today on Twitter:
Os cariocas já podem acessar o site https://t.co/k8MIayfYcM para obter informações sobre como proceder com os serviços afetados pelo ataque hacker aos sistemas da Prefeitura. pic.twitter.com/jyvhnArHpd
— Prefeitura do Rio (@Prefeitura_Rio) August 19, 2022
[translation of above: Cariocas can now access the website http://prefeitura.rio to obtain information on how to proceed with the services affected by the hacker attack on City Hall’s systems.]
They also tweeted (translated):
We are working to re-establish systems with a secure digital environment. We regret all the inconvenience caused. The Police Department for Repression of Computer Crimes was called to investigate the case. Follow updates on our social media.
Puerto Rico (U.S.) – Oficina de Servicios Legislativos (Office of Legislative Services, OLS)
Puerto Rico’s Oficina de Servicios Legislativos (Office of Legislative Services, OLS) suffered a cyberattack on Wednesday. El Vocero reports that Monica Freire Florit, the director of the OLS, informed the legislative presidents through a letter that the servers and computers were isolated as a preventive measure.
Due to the lack of Internet, all requests from the legislative offices to the OLS will have to be made through letters to be delivered personally.
A copy of Florit’s letter has been shared on Twitter:
Senado recibe otro ataque cibernético pic.twitter.com/CjwooRTbBa
— Juan Marrero (@juan_marrerod) August 18, 2022
[translation of tweet: Senate receives another cyber attack]
DataBreaches has not found any listing by any ransomware group for either Prefeitura do Rio or Oficina de Servicios Legislativos. The tweet by Juan Marrero that referred to another or second attack was referring to an earlier cyberattack reported in January.
Editing by Dissent