brazil

I know there’s a lot of politics associated with this story, but concentrate on the cybersecurity aspect for a moment. The cell phones of a thousand Brazilians, including senior government officials, were hacked — seemingly by actors much less sophisticated than rival governments.

Brazil’s federal police arrested four people for allegedly hacking 1,000 cellphones belonging to various government officials, including that of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Police detective João Vianey Xavier Filho said the group hacked into the messaging apps of around 1,000 different cellphone numbers, but provided little additional information at a news conference in Brasilia on Wednesday. Cellphones used by Bolsonaro were among those attacked by the group, the justice ministry said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the president was informed of the security breach.

[…]

In the court order determining the arrest of the four suspects, Judge Vallisney de Souza Oliveira wrote that the hackers had accessed Moro’s Telegram messaging app, along with those of two judges and two federal police officers.

When I say that smartphone security equals national security, this is the kind of thing I am talking about.

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