The Portuguese Public Prosecutor said, on Tuesday, that the Portuguese judiciary has opened an investigation into the case of secret documents sent by NATO to Portugal and found for sale on the Internet after hacking a computer targeting the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
“We confirm that an investigation has been opened, headed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Central Administration for Criminal Investigations and Procedures (DCIAP),” a spokesman for the prosecution told AFP.
The Portuguese judiciary’s reaction follows information reported on Thursday by the daily Diario de Notícias that hundreds of secret documents sent by NATO to Portugal were found for sale on the dark web.
This theft of documents followed a computer hacking operation “carried out by robots programmed to reveal this type of documents,” targeting the General Staff of the armies and military intelligence services, according to the Portuguese newspaper.
And US intelligence discovered the incident and then informed the Portuguese authorities last August through the US Embassy in Lisbon.
The newspaper said that the investigation by Portuguese cyber security agencies would have identified the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Military Intelligence and the Department of Defense as the targets of the cyber attack.
In response to a question by AFP, Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s office repeated the answer to the newspaper, stressing that the government was working “so that the credibility of Portugal, as a founding member of NATO, remains intact.”
The government added that “whenever there is a suspicion of intrusion (…) the situation is analyzed at length” and measures are taken to “promote awareness of cyber security,” without confirming or denying that the documents had been stolen.
