The Rio Grande do Sul Court of Justice (TJRS) is the target of a cyberattack, and procedural deadlines are suspended.

The Court of Justice of Rio Grande do Sul (TJRS) reported on Wednesday night (April 28) that a cyberattack made the court's computer systems unavailable. According to the body, the instability was noticed by employees and later confirmed by the press office.

"The Court of Justice of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (TJRS) was the target of a cyberattack today [Wednesday], and as a result, its computer systems are unavailable. All possible measures are being taken to restore normalcy as soon as possible, as well as to identify the causes and perpetrators of the criminal act," says part of the statement.

According to the TJRS (Court of Justice of Rio Grande do Sul), technical teams and the TJRS Intelligence Unit are working on the matter, and specialized support has been requested from the National Council of Justice in this area. However, there is still no date for the system to be restored.

"Serious attack"

The cyberattack against the TJRS system was described as "serious" and "unprecedented in the history of the Rio Grande do Sul Judiciary" by Judge Antônio Vinicius Amaro da Silveira, president of the Communication Council, on the morning of this Thursday (April 29).

"It's a criminal cyberattack that harms citizens by attacking one of the pillars of democracy, which is Justice," Silveira told the Gaucha ZH portal.

Understand

On Wednesday morning, court employees had already reported difficulties performing their duties using the judicial portal, leading the TJRS (Rio Grande do Sul Court of Justice) press office to confirm the problem. The eProc, eThemis, SEEU, and SEI systems were not affected, according to the Court.

At the time, the systems security team even instructed internal users not to access computers remotely or log into equipment within the court's network.

On Wednesday night, the Court of Justice published a resolution suspending procedural and administrative deadlines due to system instability. Therefore, the running of procedural deadlines in both physical and electronic processes, in both judicial and administrative areas, is suspended until further notice regarding the restoration of the system.

The motivation and authorship are under investigation, but judicial sources believe the objective is to impede the proper functioning of the judicial system during this period. In recent days, judicial decisions have been in the spotlight due to the controversy surrounding the return to in-person classes.

Hacker attack at the Superior Court of Justice (STJ)

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) suffered the worst hacker attack in its history at the end of last year.

On November 3rd, the Court contacted the Federal Police to try to clarify the attack it had been suffering since the previous day. Throughout the week, hackers managed to encrypt the entire court database, making the information inaccessible to the servers themselves, judges, lawyers, and people involved in the operation.

Court technicians found an alleged ransom demand—including an email address that supposedly belonged to the perpetrators of the attack—so that the institution could begin negotiations to recover the content. In the message, the hackers warned the professionals that any attempt to recover the content could result in the destruction of the files.

Source: Metropoles.com