Tag Archive for: brazil

Lula inauguration: Leftist Lula sworn in as Brazil president

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BRASILIA –


Leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president of Brazil on Sunday under tightened security in the capital Brasilia following threats of violence by supporters of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.


In a speech to Congress, Lula said he was receiving a ruined country where hunger had returned under Bolsonaro, whose government he said had depleted resources for education, health and the conservation of forests, and undermined human rights.


He accused Bolsonaro’s “negationist” administration of committing “genocide” by failing to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 680,000 Brazilians.


Lula said he won October’s election against opponents who had attacked the country’s internationally-praised voting system.


“If we are here, it is thanks to the political awareness of Brazilian society and the democratic front that we formed,” he said. “Democracy was the great victor, overcoming the greatest mobilization of public and private resources ever seen and the most violent threat to freedom to vote.”


After the swearing-in, Lula was due to drive in an open-top Rolls-Royce to the Planalto palace to don the presidential sash before a crowd of 30,000 supporters, while tens of thousands gathered to celebrate on Brasilia’s esplanade.


The mood in the city was tense after the most fraught election in a generation.


Lula, 77, narrowly defeated Bolsonaro in October to win an unprecedented third presidential term after a hiatus that saw him spend a year and a half behind bars on corruption convictions that were later overturned.


His 580 days in prison reinforced his sense of social justice and convinced him of the need to prioritize ending poverty over boosting profits, allies said. Read full story


In his previous years as Workers Party (PT) president from 2003-2010, the former union leader lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty during a commodity boom that buoyed the economy.


Now, he faces the daunting challenge of improving Brazil’s stagnant economy while also uniting a country that has become painfully polarized under Bolsonaro.


“A lot is expected of Lula. He’ll have the…

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Brazil is the second country that suffers the most cyber attacks in Latin America

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This is a machine translation of Fortinet‘s press release

São Paulo, August 18, 2022 – Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in comprehensive, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, released data collected in the first half of 2022 by its threat intelligence lab, FortiGuard Labs .

Brazil suffered 31.5 billion attempted cyber attacks from January to June this year – a 94% increase over the same period last year (with 16.2 billion) – being the second most targeted country in Latin America, behind Mexico, with 85 billion, and followed by Colombia (with 6.3 billion) and Peru (with 5.2 billion). In total, the Latin America and Caribbean region has suffered 137 billion attempted cyber attacks.

In addition to the extremely high numbers, the data reveals an increase in the use of more sophisticated and targeted strategies such as ransomware. During the first six months of 2022, approximately 384,000 ransomware distribution attempts were detected globally. Of these, 52,000 were destined for Latin America.

Mexico was the country with the highest ransomware distribution activity in the period, with more than 18,000 detections, followed by Colombia (17,000) and Costa Rica (14,000). Peru, Argentina and Brazil appear next.

Furthermore, according to FortiGuard Labs, the number of ransomware signatures has nearly doubled in six months. In the first half of 2022, 10,666 ransomware signatures were found in Latin America, with only 5,400 seen in the last half of 2021.

“Ransomware attacks are affecting companies across industries, governments and even entire economies, with new variants constantly emerging from the hands of diverse international cybercriminal groups. This is due to the profitability and attention that this type of attack brings to criminals, making them more dangerous and causing great financial and image losses to their victims”, says Alexandre Bonatti, Director of Engineering at Fortinet Brasil.

The most active ransomware campaigns in the region during the first half of 2022 were Revil, LockBit and Hive. Conti ransomware, in turn, has been one of the most popular in the media due to the high impact it has had recently in Costa Rica.

Most active…

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Hired ‘hackers’ fail to disrupt Brazil voting system

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BRASILIA, Brazil — More than 20 would-be hackers gathered in the Brazilian electoral authority’s headquarters in the capital last week. Their mission: infiltrate the nation’s voting system ahead of a race in October.

Their three-day battery of attempted assaults ended Friday and was part of planned testing that happens every election year, usually proceeding without incident or drawing any attention. But with President Jair Bolsonaro continuously sowing doubt about the system’s reliability, the test took on an outsized significance as the electoral authority, known as the TSE, seeks to shore up confidence in the upcoming general elections.

Analysts and members of the TSE said the test’s results were more encouraging than ever. All the experts attempting to disrupt the system — among them federal police agents and university professors in engineering, information technology, data security and computer science — had failed.

“No attack managed to alter the destination of a vote in the electronic ballot,” Julio Valente da Costa, the TSE’s secretary of information technology, told reporters in an interview afterward.

“The importance of this test is for us to rest assured, at least about all the technology and computing components for the elections.”

When Bolsonaro won the presidential race four years ago, he claimed he had actually secured victory in the first round, not the runoff weeks later.

The former army captain has repeatedly made accusations the voting system used for three decades is vulnerable, and at times said he possesses proof fraud occurred, but has never presented any evidence.

Last year, Bolsonaro suggested the election could be canceled unless a voting reform was passed in Congress, but the proposed constitutional change did not garner enough votes.

Analysts and politicians have expressed worry that far-right Bolsonaro, who is trailing leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in all early polls, is laying the groundwork to follow the lead of his ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and reject election results.

The TSE has gone to great lengths to bring more openness to the electoral process, even inviting the armed forces to sit on its transparency…

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Hired ‘hackers’ try, and fail, to invade Brazil vote system

/in


BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — More than 20 would-be hackers gathered in the Brazilian electoral authority’s headquarters in the capital this week. Their mission: infiltrate the nation’s voting system ahead of a hotly anticipated race in October.

Their 3-day battery of attempted assaults ended Friday and was part of planned testing that happens every election year, usually proceeding without incident or, for that matter, drawing any attention. But with President Jair Bolsonaro continuously sowing doubt about the system’s reliability, the test took on an outsized significance as the electoral authority, known as the TSE, seeks to shore up confidence in the upcoming general elections.

Analysts and members of the TSE said the test’s results were more encouraging than ever. All the experts attempting to disrupt the system — among whom were Federal Police agents and university professors in engineering, information technology, data security and computer science — had failed.

“No attack managed to alter the destination of a vote in the electronic ballot,” Julio Valente da Costa, the TSE’s secretary of information technology, told The Associated Press in an interview afterward. “The importance of this test is for us to rest assured, at least about all the technology and computing components for the elections.”

When Bolsonaro won the presidential race four years ago, he claimed he had actually secured victory in the first round, not the runoff weeks later. The former army captain has repeatedly made accusations the voting system used for three decades is vulnerable, and at times said he possesses proof fraud occurred, but has never presented any evidence.

Last year, Bolsonaro suggested the election could be canceled unless a voting reform was passed in Congress. But the proposed constitutional change did not garner enough votes.

Analysts and politicians have expressed worry that far-right Bolsonaro, who is trailing leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in all early polls, is laying the groundwork to follow the lead of his ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and reject election results.

The TSE has gone to great lengths to bring more openness to the…

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