On Tuesday, Vodafone Portugal released an official statement saying that the company was hit by a cyberattack that caused country-wide disruption across its network. The company started noticing network issues on Monday night.
In the statement, Vodafone Portugal said that as a result of the cyberattack, the services that are affected include its 4G/5G network, television, voice and SMS services, and digital answering services.
Vodafone Portugal hit with cyberattack affecting 4G/5G network, TV, SMS services https://t.co/mQLZ2rEXSN
— The Cyber Security Hub™ (@TheCyberSecHub) February 8, 2022
According to the official statement from the company:
“Vodafone was the target of a network disruption that began on the night of February 7, 2022, due to a deliberate and malicious cyberattack intended to cause damage and disruption. As soon as the first sign of a problem on the network was detected, Vodafone acted immediately to identify and contain the effects and restore services.”
On Tuesday, the company said that they are working progressively to restore services as mobile voice services and mobile data services on the 3G network are already recovered. “Unfortunately, the scale and seriousness of the criminal act to which we were subjected implies careful and prolonged work for all other services – recovery process that involves multiple national and international teams and external partners.” said the company.
Vodafone has contacted law enforcement agencies regarding the attack, and an internal investigation has already begun. Last month, Portugals two biggest news outlets, Impresa and Cofina, were also hit with a ransomware attack.
Due to the cyberattack on Vodafone, the country’s biggest ATM network, SIBS, reported issues. Most ATM machines are asking viewers to go to another ATM because the operation cannot be carried out right now.
In a press conference, Mário Vaz, the executive chairman of Vodafone Portugal, confirmed that SIBS is a Vodafone client, and the cyberattack has resulted in disruptions across SIBS ATM machines in the country.
“The [SIBS] ATM network is supported by Vodafone network. Some of the ATMs have the mobile data network [4G] as their interconnection network, which was unavailable until close to midnight. When we started connecting data to 3G, those ATMs recovered, but several customers had the experience of finding ATMs not available because of the suspension of Vodafone network services during that period.” said Mário Vaz.
On Tuesday, SIBs also confirmed that from 9:50 pm Monday onwards, there had been an issue in the support communications that resulted in constraints on ATM services. The company said that it was unaware of the problem, and the telecom operator is doing everything to “find a solution so that all its services are operational and stabilized as soon as possible.”
