The victims include essential services such as the post office, firefighters and the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM).
According to Vodafone Portugal, it was a "targeted attack on the network," which aimed to "cause damage and disturbance."
Access to 3G voice and data services has already been restored, but business and banking services are still inaccessible, said Mario Vaz, chief executive officer (CEO) of Vodafone Portugal.
According to the company, the attack started late on Monday and reached a "severity level that made the recovery of services as difficult as possible." It caused the "abrupt interruption" of almost all services.
According to Vaz, Vodafone Portugal continues to cooperate with the Judicial Police to investigate the attack and its origins. "There are no indications of customer data breach," he said.
"Vodafone was the target of a network disruption that began on the night of February 7, 2022 due to a deliberate and malicious cyberattack intended to cause damage and disruption. As soon as the first sign of a problem on the network was detected, Vodafone acted immediately to identify and contain the effects and restore services," Vodafone Portugal said.
"This situation is affecting the provision of services based on data networks, namely the 4G/5G network, fixed voice, television, SMS and voice/digital answering services. We have already recovered mobile voice services and mobile data services are available exclusively on the 3G network in almost the entire country but, unfortunately, the scale and seriousness of the criminal act to which we were subjected implies careful and prolonged work for all other services. recovery process that involves multiple national and international teams and external partners.
"This recovery will happen progressively throughout this Tuesday. As it is certain that the in-depth investigation of the criminal act to which we were subjected will continue indefinitely and with the involvement of the competent authorities, we have no evidence to date that Customer data has been accessed and/or compromised.
"Vodafone remains absolutely determined to restore the normality of services in the shortest possible time and deeply regrets the inconvenience caused to our Customers. We have at Vodafone Portugal and the Group an experienced team of cybersecurity professionals who, together with the competent authorities, are carrying out an in-depth investigation to understand and overcome the situation. We will update service status information as the situation progresses.
"Vodafone started to restore mobile data base services over its 4G network following an intense and demanding replacement operation. This start-up is currently limited to restricted areas of the country, and is gradually being expanded to the greatest possible number of Customers," the company said Wednesday.
"The service is also subject to some limitations, namely with regard to the maximum speed allowed in order to ensure better monitoring of network usage, as well as a more equitable and sustainable distribution of the capacity made available to our Customers. This is yet another step that is part of the complex journey that we have been traveling and whose effort has been mitigated by the many expressions of solidarity and understanding that have made us arrive.
"We will continue to update our Customers on the evolution of the replacement of services whenever justified."
Vodafone's competitors have offered to help in restoring the company's services ■