Atento the latest victim in series of Brazilian cyber attacks

A Rio de Janeiro branch of Spanish corporation Atento has confirmed it was targeted by a cyber attack which brought it to a standstill. 

Atento, a multinational customer service provider, is based in Madrid, Spain, but is the largest provider of customer relationship management in Latin America. This week, one of their branches based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, suffered a large cyber attack which continues a trend of cyber attacks against Brazilian based organisations in the last two weeks.  

Atento released a statement following the incident stating: 

“In order to prevent any possible risk to our customers, we isolated the affected systems within Atento and interrupted our systems’ connections with customers. This resulted in a temporary interruption of service,” 

The company has stated that their cybersecurity division is still working to mitigate the threat, aiming to restore services “as soon as possible”, but TecMundo reports that the attack is a Lockbit 2.0 ransomware attack – and the ransom must be paid within six days.  

Furthermore, the TecMundo report also claims that the hackers have warned Atento that if their demands are not met, the encrypted data currently being held hostage will be leaked online at the end of the six days. 

This attack is the third major cyberattack in Brazil in the last two weeks which follows the trend of ransomware. As of now, it is not known whether the perpetrators and incidents are linked, but its safe to assume this attack will not be the last. 

On Thursday the 14th October, Brazilian insurance company Porto Seguro’s services were unstable and some taken offline as a result of a cyber attack of the same nature as the Atento attack. Porto Seguro reported the incident to the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) on Thursday and released a statement saying they "promptly activated all security protocols". 

The other recent cyber-attack occurred two weeks prior, when travel operators CVC was hit by a ransomware attack that entirely shut down their systems. The company website displayed a notice of the cyber attack and stated it was “working diligently to mitigate the impact of the incident and ensure business continuity”. 

As reported by ZDnet, “security teams are in place in less than a third of Brazilian organisations” despite research from a MasterCard study showing that cyberattacks are very frequent. 

These latest attacks online continue to highlight the necessity for any organisation to uphold a good cybersecurity posture when operating online, and the destructive threat to any business posed by cyber-crime.