The websites of the Presidency and the Senate went offline today.
The group that carries out the attacks has even hacked into CIA computers.
Brazilian government websites experienced instability again today. During the afternoon, the portals of the Presidency of the Republic, the Senate, and Portal Brasil were not loading and displayed error messages. The Ministry of Sport's page was also taken offline, one day after the LulzSecBrazil group made several other websites unavailable.
This time, the group had not claimed responsibility for any attacks to take the websites offline until mid-afternoon on Twitter – as they did yesterday. The Presidency of the Republic, when contacted, was still investigating the reason for the unavailability of the government websites.
By around 17 PM, all the portals that had experienced problems were back online, even if with some configuration issues.
Earlier, the hacker group claimed to have copied protected data from the Ministry of Sport's website, showing alleged discrepancies between contributions and receipts of money from the federal government in states that will host World Cup matches.
According to the data, the amounts received by Northeastern states are much greater than those contributed. In the South and Southeast, however, according to the hackers' information, the amounts sent to the federal government were higher than those transferred from the federal government to the states.
Furthermore, the group released personal data of President Dilma Rousseff and the mayor of São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, such as their CPF numbers (Brazilian taxpayer ID), phone numbers, and personal email addresses.
On Wednesday, the same group claimed responsibility for an attack on Petrobras' website, after having unsuccessfully attempted to hack into the websites of the Presidency of the Republic, the Federal Revenue Service, and Portal Brasil during the early hours of the morning.
According to the BBC, LulzSecBrazil is the Brazilian branch of the international collective Lulz Security, which has been gaining notoriety for recent attacks on servers belonging to the CIA (American intelligence agency), the FBI (American federal police), the British public health service, the NHS, the company Sony, and the American TV networks Fox and PBS.