Parliament investigating possible hacking of its website

Parliament is investigating a possible computer attack announced by ‘hackers’ Lapsu$ Group ‘site’ on the Portuguese parliament, indicating, however, that “there is no evidence” that it has occurred.

The newspaper Expresso reported Sunday that the Lapsu$ Group hackers announced they had broken into and “stolen sensitive information” from the Portuguese parliament’s website, which was down for five minutes, and that the Judicial Police is investigating the case.

Contacted by Lusa news agency, the director of the Communication Office at the parliament, João Amaral, said that “there is currently no evidence that the site has been attacked”, but the IT department “is running all the tools to investigate the matter”.

According to the newspaper, “on a legislative election day, hackers calling themselves the Lapsu$ Group guarantee to have broken into the ‘site’ and stolen information”.

“Today we hacked into the Parliament site and had access to Microsoft applications and a large number of databases containing sensitive Government information related to the personal details of politicians and political parties, lots of documents, emails, passwords…”, the paper quoted the hackers as saying.

Amaral told Lusa that all the information on the Portuguese parliament’s website “is public and transparent”.

According to the paper, the group of hackers who claimed to have stolen information from the parliament site are the same ones who attacked the Impresa group earlier this month, destroying millions of files from Expresso and Sic.