“They ended up being denied by another collective of hackers who were the authors of the major attack on TAP last year”, which exposed the data of more than a million customers on the Dark Web, a company source told CNN Portugal.

The alleged attack was claimed by the Ghost Sec group at the beginning of July this year, which, on several Telegram channels, announced that it was in possession of 350 gigabytes of private TAP data obtained through ransomware, a technique that restricts access to this type information until a ransom is paid.

This group, which became known in the computer security community for having designed a ransomware program that uses military-grade encryption to escape detection from antivirus systems, also announced that TAP would be placed in a “race for information”, as it also gave anyone the opportunity to purchase the data for a price lower than that requested from the airline.

A TAP source explains that the company was alerted to this “blackmail” at the time, and explains that “this attempt to extort money was, shortly afterwards, denied by other hacker groups on Telegram”, namely Ragnar Locker, who were the authors of the mega attack on the carrier in August 2022, resulting in the publication of one and a half million customer data on the Dark Web. “There was no new attack”, he also guarantees.

This group that tried to extort money from TAP in July has also claimed in recent days several attacks on Israeli electronic systems. This is after Ghost Sec expressed its support for the Hamas attack on October 7th, the largest on Israeli soil in the last fifty years. “GhostSec is proud of all the fighters who were successful in humiliating Israel,” the group said in a statement.

Among these attacks, the group claimed, on its Telegram channel on October 14, to have hacked 27 water pumps and several other electronic systems responsible for controlling the temperature and PH levels of swimming pools and also wastewater treatment.