Brazilian Ministry of Health suffers cyberattack and COVID-19 vaccination data vanishes

Angelica Mari
ZDNet
Fri, 10 Dec 2021 07:42 UTC

The image left by the hackers claiming the Ministry of Health attack

Websites under Brazil's Ministry of Health (MoH) have suffered a major ransomware attack that resulted in the unavailability of COVID-19 vaccination data of millions of citizens.

Following that attack that took place at around 1 am today, all of MoH's websites, including ConecteSUS, which tracks the trajectory of citizens in the public healthcare system, became unavailable. This includes the COVID-19 digital vaccination certificate, which is available via the ConecteSUS app.

According to a message left by the Lapsus$ Group, which has claimed responsibility for the attack, some 50TB worth of data has been extracted from the MoH's systems and subsequently deleted. "Contact us if you want the data returned", the message said, alongside contact details for the authors of the attack.

Just before 7 am, the images with the message left by the hackers were removed, but the websites remained unavailable.

Following the attack, Brazilian health minister Marcelo Queiroga said his department holds a backup of the data allegedly copied and erased from the national health service's databases. The National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) said it is following up on the case.

ANPD said the Ministry of Health was notified to provide clarifications on the case, as determined by the country's General Data Protection Regulations. It added Institutional Security Office and the Federal Police will be contacted to cooperate with the investigation and inspection of the attack.

In September, the incident follows a previous attack on the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa). The attack was focused on the healthcare declaration for travelers, compulsory for individuals entering Brazil via airports.

The attack took place soon after the cancellation of the World Cup qualifier match between Brazil and Argentina, whereby Anvisa interrupted the game after four Argentinian players were accused of breaking COVID-19 travel protocols.

Similarly, the latest issue faced by the Ministry of Health occurs amid increasing pressure on the Brazilian government to demand COVID-19 vaccination certificates from international travelers coming to Brazil as a response to the rise of the omicron variant.

This is not the first major security issue faced by Brazil's Ministry of Health over the last few months. In November 2020, the personal and health information of more than 16 million Brazilian COVID-19 patients were leaked online after a hospital employee uploaded a spreadsheet with usernames, passwords, and access keys to sensitive government systems on GitHub.

Less than a week later, another major security incident emerged. The personal information of more than 243 million Brazilians, including alive and deceased, was exposed online after web developers left the password for a crucial government database inside the source code of an official MoH website for at least six months.

Comment: And they got hit again a few days later:

Brazil's Ministry of Health has suffered a second cyberattack in less than a week, which has compromised various internal systems, including the platform that holds COVID-19 vaccination data.

[...]

According to Queiroga, the department is working to recover the systems as soon as possible. However, he said the second attack means ConecteSUS, the platform that issues COVID-19 vaccine certificates, would not be back online today (14) as originally planned.

Queiroga noted the attack had been unsuccessful and that no data had been compromised, but this second event "caused turmoil" and "got in the way" of bringing systems back online. The minister did not provide an estimate of when the impacted systems would be reestablished.

The ministerial confirmation of the second cyberattack was preceded by a statement released by the Ministry of Health saying that Datasus, the department's IT function, carried out a preventive systems maintenance exercise on Monday, meaning systems would be temporarily unavailable.

The second attack meant civil servants had to be sent home on Monday since it was not possible to access the health ministry's core systems, such as the platforms that generate reports relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.