Criminals break into Brazil’s government systems

The Brazilian Federal Police are investigating an intrusion on the government’s payment system Siafi, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo revealed on Monday. 

The Brazilian Report confirmed with the press office of the Federal Police that an investigation is underway — but its details remain sealed. The Finance Ministry and Brazil’s intelligence agency Abin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Siafi serves as the main tool for recording, monitoring, and controlling budgetary, financial, and asset payments made by the government. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad told reporters that he was told there was an “authentication problem” and that the fraud was kept secret even from members of the cabinet. 

According to several reports, the criminals who broke into Siafi used the system to siphon public money into unknown bank accounts. Mr. Haddad said he could not give an estimate of how much money was stolen.

The Treasury Department, which operates under the Finance Ministry and manages the payment system, reportedly implemented additional security measures after the attacks were detected in early April.

Folha de S.Paulo added that the user authentication system suffered an attack, and that managers authorized to make financial transactions had their credentials used by unauthorized third parties. Sources told the paper they suspect hackers employed phishing techniques for several months to obtain a large number of passwords and later conduct financial transactions.

Two years ago, Brazil’s Federal Accounts Court published a booklet about the high-risk situation that federal public agencies continue to face with regards to cybersecurity. 

In the document, the court offered urgent recommendations for public sector managers to mitigate the risks of cyber incidents that “can significantly harm the government and citizens and negatively impact the process of digital transformation in the country.”

The court recalled cyber incidents that hit several federal organizations, such as the Health Ministry in December 2021, which was the target of a hacker attack that prevented issuing the Covid national vaccination certificate and updating pandemic data. 

The booklet was prepared based on an inspection carried out by the court, which found that most public bodies are still at an early level of maturity in terms of information security and cybersecurity controls — a situation which increases the risk of cyber threats and attacks. 

The study showed, for instance, that more than half of the 377 public organizations analyzed do not adequately deal with hardware unauthorized by the agency’s administration, maintain a process of evaluation and monitoring of hardware and software to mitigate vulnerabilities, nor have a process for receiving incident notifications.

A recent study by NordVPN showed that more than 2 billion cookies containing Brazilians’ personal information were stolen and made available for sale on the dark web last year — more than any other country in the world. Brazil is also one of the world’s top targets for cyberattacks, only behind the U.S. in 2023, according to Netscout.

• #cybersecurity