STJ suffers hacker attack and it is the worst in the history of Brazil

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The Superior Court of Justice (STJ), one of the four highest courts in Brazil, called the Federal Police on Tuesday (3) to uk mobile database the occurrence of a hacker attack on its systems. Today (5), a source linked to the court told Bastidor that this is a very serious situation, with the entire court database encrypted, completely inaccessible to citizens and court employees.

Bastidor also says that third - party companies, as well as the Federal Police, are trying to decrypt the STJ servers, but there does not seem to be any indication at the moment that the hired technicians will be able to perform the task in the next few days. The situation is even worse because even the Court's backups were encrypted by the criminals.

As a result, the STJ is currently completely in the dark, without access to a huge and historic collection of legal proceedings. This is certainly the most serious attack ever launched against a Brazilian state institution in the country's history.

What happened
According to information from G1, a report from the Court's technology department, obtained by TV Globo , revealed that a system outage that occurred around 3 pm on Monday (2) led to the interruption of the trials. The court's technicians identified an external attack and began to assess the extent of the damage.

Initially, a check was carried out on the internal network protection system, but later the technicians verified that the source of the error was the server where almost all of the STJ systems are hosted. Only at night was a file detected with characteristics compatible with a virus, created a few minutes earlier.

The technical report clarifies that a new analysis, this time carried out by the equipment manufacturer's support, confirmed that the failure occurred due to a cyber attack, which compromised the integrity of the system's files. Since the attack, all of the Court's systems have been inoperative, including email communications.

Measures taken
The president of the STJ, minister Humberto Martins, asked that the Court's employees not turn on their personal computers and avoid emails (Source: STJ/Reproduction)The president of the STJ, minister Humberto Martins, asked that the Court's employees not turn on their personal computers and avoid e-mails. (Source: STJ/Reproduction) Source: STJ

Later, new attacks were discovered, targeting the systems' backup area, according to the document. It was then determined that the STJ's internet access links should be taken down and all users who had used the network in the last 24 hours should be blocked.

Technicians are currently working to recover the system using backups stored on tapes. During the pandemic, all STJ trial sessions are being held via videoconference.

Minister Humberto Martins, who assumed the presidency of the Court last August, sent a message to the other ministers, canceling all virtual and/or videoconference trial sessions, until the security of the court's data traffic is reestablished.

Martins also recommended that ministers and employees avoid connecting computers with any type of connection to the Court's computerized systems, even personal ones, and that emails should be avoided until the situation returns to normal.