Vodafone Portugal suffered a cyberattack Monday evening, which took down the company’s 4G and 5G data networks and SMS and television services. The company restored 3G networks the same day, followed by 4G data services being gradually restored starting Tuesday.
The company announced on Tuesday that 4G services had been restored following an “intense and demanding replacement operation”, but the network was limited to some regions of the country in addition to throttling the network speed for better network monitoring and ensuring equitable bandwidth distribution between their customers.
The latest update came on Wednesday, as Vodafone announced that the network had been stabilised. The fixed voice service was back online, and the 4G data service was expanded to further parts of the country. While full service hasn’t been restored yet, Vodafone claims it’s in the final phase of resolutions.
While Vodafone hasn’t released any details about the type of the attack yet, they have stated that there’s no evidence of customer data being accessed or compromised. The company has also stated that an in-depth investigation will be “prolonged indefinitely and with the involvement of the competent authorities”.
With over four million cell phone subscribers and an additional 3.4 million home and business internet customers, the attack has caused quite the impact. Although Vodafone says the television service wasn’t directly impacted, some customers might’ve experienced outages on Wednesday caused by ongoing work and interconnection between systems.
Portuguese companies have been the target of Ransomware attacks recently, with two of the country’s most prominent news outlets, Impresa and COFINA, being hacked by a ransomware group calling themselves Lapsus$. At the moment, the group hasn’t taken responsibility for the Vodafone attack.
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