The director of technology of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), Hugo Freitas, said yesterday, during yet another trial session of the Football Leaks case, at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, that the FPF computer system is “quite resilient” to attacks external, such as that allegedly carried out by hacker Rui Pinto. “We work with a set of internationally recognized partners and the email service that FPF uses is also used by Forbes’ top-500 companies,” he said.
However, the official stressed that even the best computer systems are vulnerable to the “human factor” and cited as an example of vulnerability “one of the most used passwords” in Portugal (he did not refer to the FPF). «What is fundamental to understand about any type of attack is that it is rare to have originated from a technological component. This means that the human factor is inseparable from security. I can create a system that requires a password with at least 12 characters and special characters, but if the person writes amorzinho123 we have a problem ”, he said, also revealing that“ computer attacks happen regularly ”and that the integrity of the system computing was at stake when a user’s data was compromised “through phishing”.
However, the FPF’s internal investigation into access records, following information provided by the Judiciary Police, did not fully identify the source of the attack. During the public prosecutor’s inquiry, it was also possible to realize that the main defendant and creator of Football Leaks would be in possession of the passwords of the accounts of the federation’s social networks, namely, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
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