President Jair Bolsonaro's cellphones were a target of cyber attacks, the Brazilian Justice Ministry said in a statement, after a briefing on the incident by the federal police "as a matter of national security".
According to Globo, Bolsonaro's cellphones were targeted by the same hackers who broke into the Telegram channel of Justice Minister Sergio Moro.
Two days earlier Brazilian federal police arrested four people over the hacking of cellphones belonging to Moro and prosecutors involved in a corruption inquiry.
The report comes after a leaked dialogue in June between then-federal Judge Sergio Moro, the current justice minister, and prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol seriously shook the top echelons of the Jair Bolsonaro government. The incident showed how the government and its members are exposed and, therefore, the guidelines for the Justice Ministry was to redouble security measures. Globo has reported that according to this tendency, sensitive issues are handled only by encrypted phones, i.e. with technology that protects the data of the handsets.
Globo reported that the president and other members of the executive have always preferred messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram to communicate and even deal with topics considered confidential but were advised to move their conversations to encrypted phones provided by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency.
