NATO Secret Documents Stolen from Portuguese Military Sold on Darknet

According to media reports, the General Staff of the Portuguese Armed Forces was targeted by a hacker attack, during which cybercriminals managed to steal secret NATO documents. The stolen data has now been put up for sale on the darknet.

The local publication Diário de Notícias reported on the cyberattack against the country’s General Staff. Citing its own sources, journalists say that the General Staff only learned about the attack after hackers published samples of the stolen data on the darknet, announcing that they would sell the full dump to interested parties.

It turns out that American cyber intelligence agents were the first to notice the offer to sell the secret data. They notified the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, and diplomats then warned the Portuguese government about the data breach. Currently, experts from the National Security Office and the National Cybersecurity Center of Portugal are investigating the incident.

“This was a prolonged and covert cyberattack using bots programmed to detect this type of document, which were then stolen in several stages,” one unnamed source close to the investigation told journalists.

The same sources told the publication that the leaked documents are “extremely serious,” and their distribution could trigger a real crisis of trust in Portugal within NATO.

Local media note that news of this leak surprised many members of parliament, who do not understand why secret military data is being sold online and why the country’s intelligence services failed to detect such a serious breach in time.

So far, there have been no official statements from Portuguese authorities regarding the incident.