Madrid
Hundreds of secret NATO documents sent to Portugal have been stolen and sold on the dark web (dark web), according to the Portuguese newspaper, Thursday, September 8 Newspaper.
Anonymous sources told the newspaper that Portugal’s highest military body, the General Staff of the Armed Forces, had been subjected to a “protracted and unprecedented cyber attack” that resulted in the leak of classified information to NATO.
The Portuguese government learned of the cyber attack in August when US intelligence officials discovered that classified documents were for sale on the dark web.
The sources said that the leak is considered “extremely dangerous.”
The newspaper contacted the US Embassy in Portugal and various Portuguese government agencies for comment on the incident, but none of them confirmed or denied the incident.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said: “The government can ensure that the Ministry of Defense and the Portuguese Armed Forces work on a daily basis to ensure that the credibility of Portugal, as a founding member of NATO, remains intact.”
He continued, “When there is a suspicion that a cybersecurity network has been compromised, the situation is thoroughly analyzed and all measures are put in place.”
The first investigation into the data breach found that confidential information security rules were breached, as unsecured communications were used when receiving and forwarding documents, according to the sources.
The cyber attack would have been undetectable and carried out by a network of bots designed to discover confidential information.
NATO would have asked for explanations from the Portuguese government. Two Portuguese officials will travel to NATO headquarters in Brussels for a high-level meeting next week.
This would not be the first time that Portugal has been implicated in a security breach related to NATO documents. In 2018, Frederico Carvalhao Gil, a Security Information Service (SIS) official, was convicted of spying for Russia after he was caught selling classified alliance and EU documents to a Russian agent.
Translated by Aisha Sandoval Laguna.
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