Manifesto for democracy targeted with cyberattacks

On the eve of the reading of a letter in defense of democracy at the University of São Paulo Law School, the system collecting the letter’s signatures was hit with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that simulated 8 million simultaneous accesses to take down the site. The IP address shows that the cyberattacks originated in Russia.

There have been more than 20,000 sabotage attempts since the platform was launched last month. The site’s security mechanisms managed to block all of them. The cases were reported to the authorities and are under investigation, according to the São Paulo public spending watchdogs, one of the organizers.

The letter will be read at an event this Thursday. There are more than 800,000 signatories, including artists, bankers, athletes, and former ministers, among others. The date coincides with the reading of another manifesto, in 1977, which denounced the military dictatorship.

The document was released after a series of statements by President Jair Bolsonaro against the Brazilian electoral system and threats that he may not respect the election result if he loses.

At an event on Tuesday, the President mocked the initiative and said he would not sign the letter.

• #tech