Public administration and companies only had some disruption due to preventive measures, but were not damaged by WannaCry.

Public administration services, as well as Portuguese companies in general, were not hit by WannaCry, the ransomware that was the center of a large-scale international cyberattack. “The situation has been quiet; there have been malfunctions in some agencies, but only as a result of action to mitigate the problems,” said Pedro Veiga, President of the National Cybersecurity Center (CNCS).

The CNCS had operatives working 24 hours a day from Friday until yesterday. Cyberattacks have already affected 150 countries and 200,000 computer systems.

There are likely to be infected Portuguese computers, but at the level of large organizations there has been no major damage, rather than what happened in England, with the hospitals being hit. In Portugal, the disturbances refer to the temporary suspension of services such as e-mail in public organizations, as was the case of the units of the National Health Service. The computers were all disconnected on Sunday and when restarted they were limited use of e- Mail, in the case of those who had not yet implemented all security measures. But there was no record of any problems, according to the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health, which maintain the same recommendation for access to e-mails. Also in Justice and Finance precautions have been taken but there is no record of any incident affecting the services.

“The mitigation measures were taken because there was a fear that the attacks would intensify at the beginning of the week, but it did not happen, there is calm, which does not mean that it is over,” explained Pedro Veiga, assuring that the CNCS keeps a yellow alert.

Europol warns that the attacks should not be over. It says it has reached “an unprecedented level” and will require “a complex international investigation to identify the culprits.” The task is not easy, as the director of the Unit to Combat Cybercrime of the Judiciary Police, Carlos Cabreiro, acknowledged. He added that the PJ is cooperating with the CNCS and with Europol itself to take all possible “precautions” to tackle cyberattack, whose degree of sophistication is “difficult to measure”, although it is “persistent and large “.

“We do not know the origin, it’s something we’re finding out,” he told Lusa Carlos Cabreiro, referring to the attack as a mass distribution of malware (software that infiltrates another computer unlawfully, causing damage)

The possibility of further attacks was also prompted yesterday by multinational technology services company Claranet, which advised users to upgrade systems, not open unknown attachments and turn off any equipment suspected of being infected.

The European Commission has assured that no community institution has been affected but, through its spokesperson, Margaritis Schinas, stressed that “the use of cyberattacks for criminal purposes is a growing threat requiring a coordinated and comprehensive response by the EU.” Source Diario da Noticais

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