Brazilians trying to get food delivered were met with a big surprise on Tuesday evening after market leader iFood had its platform compromised. Names of restaurants were altered to highly political, anti-vaccine, and offensive messages against Marielle Franco, a politician murdered in 2018.
“Lula thief,” “Vaccines kill,” and “Bolsonaro 2022” were just a few of the malicious “rebrandings” noticed by users of the delivery app, while other restaurants were renamed with offensive slogans related to Marielle Franco, the left-wing Rio de Janeiro City Councilor who was assassinated in 2018. Around 6 percent of all listed establishments were affected, iFood admitted in a statement.
On Twitter, the company denied its platform had been hacked, attributing the change to the actions of an outsourced contractor with login privileges. It added that it took immediate measures to remedy the issue and protect restaurants’ and customers’ data. “The service provider’s access was immediately interrupted, and the names of the restaurants are already being re-established,” wrote iFood.
O acesso da prestadora de serviço foi imediatamente interrompido, e os nomes dos restaurantes já estão sendo restabelecidos.
— iFood (@iFood) November 3, 2021
É importante destacar que os meios de pagamento dos clientes estão seguros.
The incident became one of the main trending topics among Brazilian social media users. Some attributed the attack to Rio de Janeiro City Councilor Carlos Bolsonaro, seen as the brains behind the so-called “Office of Hate,” an informal and supposedly illegal misinformation network operating within the federal government.
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