Lapsus$ Ransomware Gang Attacks Portugal’s Largest TV Channel SIC

According to multiple reports on Twitter and The Record, the Lapsus$ ransomware gang has attacked SIC, Portugal’s largest TV channel.

Impresa, the largest media conglomerate in Portugal and the owner of SIC and Expresso, the country’s largest TV Channel and weekly newspaper, was hit with a ransomware attack over the New Year holiday and is currently being used to extort Impresa.

"The Lapsus$ group took credit for the attack by defacing all of Impressa’s sites with a ransom note. Besides a ransom request, the message claims that the group has gained access to Impresa’s Amazon Web Services account."

All websites for the Impresa group, Expresso, and all the SIC TV channels were recently put into maintenance mode in order to gain control back.

In response, Nasser Fattah, North America Steering Committee Chair, Shared Assessments who are developers of industry-standard third party risk assessment tools, research and best practices, offered this perspective:

“Company downtime equates to a loss of revenue, in one form or another, which is an immediate byproduct of ransomware. Hence the importance of doing ransomware tabletop exercises to not only best prepare for an attack, but also to engage the business to best understand the financial impact of system outages.”

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