On February 8 The Portuguese part of the global telecoms giant Vodafone declared that the bulk of its data services for customers were shut down because of a wave “deliberate cyber-attacks for the purpose of damage and destruction”. Vodafone’s 4G and 5g mobile network, fixed line telephony SMS, TV, and digital voice services remain inaccessible.
Portugal’s national network
Vodafone Group PLC is a British multinational company in the field of telecomm, headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It provides services within Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania. In the year 2018, Vodafone ranked fourth in the amount of mobile users (313 million) The three top spots are China Mobile, Bati Telecom and Vodafone Idea (with an 85% share). As of the 30th of September, the year 2019, Vodafone is home to 625 millions mobile users and 27 million fixed-bandwidth customers along with 22 million TV subscribers across the 24 nations (regions) across the globe.
and has a global network of partners across 47 additional countries. The Vodafone Global Enterprise Division provides telecommunications and IT solutions to corporate customers across 150 countries.
In the statement, Vodafone said: ‘We have restored mobile voice services, and currently , 3G service for mobile devices is largely accessible in Portugal. Due to the severity and scale of the crime, additional services aren’t yet restored.”
This is the most significant security incident that Vodafone Portugal has faced to date. Vodafone boasts more than 4 million mobile customers and 3.4 million business and residential online users from Portugal. This cyberattack resulted in a massive interruption to the network.
The company claimed that they were working closely with federal investigators to find out the cause of the breach. From the data that has been gathered up to now it is clear that information of customers was not leaked or used by hackers. Contrary to some reports about the incident on the web, Vodafone Portugal has not claimed that the incident was an attack by ransomware.
The reason for the rumors that circulate on the internet is because last month the extortion software groups attacked Impresa and Cofina which are the two largest news media outlets in Portugal. The gang that is at issue is called Lapsus$. It is impossible to determine if this attack against Vodafone Portugal is linked to the Lapsus$ gang.
An Vodafone Portugal employee revealed that he was only aware of the technical issue however, he was not aware that the company was able to attribute the issue to a cyberattack. Therefore, the sudden attack that occurred on the evening of February 7-8 was not reported or disclosed within the organization.
Vodafone Portugal is reported to provide fixed and mobile phone services Internet, SMS and TV products. The company offers fiber-based service for 3.4 million Portuguese households and businesses, and also has 4.7 million mobile customers. The company stated that its service is slowly improving, but the process of returning to normality will be very slow.
In the afternoon of Tuesday, the company announced that it had restored mobile voice services while its international and national team advisors were working to restore other services.
However, according to Bleeping Computer is currently only 3G is accessible for Vodafone subscribers in Portugal (up to 3MB per s) and, as stated within the statement, the restoration of other services takes a lengthy period of time and a cautious approach.The most significant asset in an enterprise is data that is kept as data stored in the cloud and computer.
To ensure continued operation and growth of the enterprise, it’s important to secure all kinds of information. Human error or damage to hard disks computer viruses, natural catastrophes such as these can result in data loss and irreparable loss to businesses. The most important issue is to restore information from a computer or virtual machine quickly enough in order to allow it to function normal. In the present, the most efficient and most popular approach is to make a successful backup.
