Football Leaks: access to PLMJ had “suspicious” hours and locations

The accesses to the computer system of the law firm PLMJ were made on time and in locations “Suspicious”, the office’s computer security analyst explained this Thursday in the trial of the Football Leaks case.

According to today’s testimony by Jordão Palma, at the 19th session of the trial, at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, the analyst at A2IT – who works exclusively for that law firm – admitted that they only realized an intrusion in the system from the disclosure of internal documents on the Internet and who immediately noticed strange circumstances when analyzing the accesses.

We tried to understand how it was extracted and we realized that the ‘Externo04’ account was being used for accessing e-mails on time and in suspicious locations ”, noted the witness, adding in this regard that most accesses – both “Punctual as prolonged” – occurred from “early morning” and of “Countries like Hungary”, in addition to being used “Anonymization services to hide the source”.

Without denying that the first suspicion fell on the computer technician (Luís Fernandes) who provided external support and to whom the credentials were captured, allegedly by Rui Pinto, Jordão Palma stressed that they were necessary “overtime” to assess the extent of the intrusion, with the analysis of accesses with “A recurrence that was not normal” among users of the PLMJ computer system.

“There was a great concern to understand the attack to make sure that there was no trace left, no open door”, said the analyst, who confirmed that he had also seen the publication of the lawyers’ documents in a company. “Safe room” and that after this situation, monitoring of user access and privileges was reinforced.

In the margin of this testimony, lawyers Pedro Rosa, Manuel Lopes Rocha and Maria Diogo Tavares were also heard, all targets of intrusion in their email boxes and which converged in the repudiation of Rui Pinto’s alleged access, considering him “illegitimate and serious ”, As well as in the violation of professional secrecy and in the refusal of public interest in your emails and documents.

The morning phase was also completed with the hearings of the last witnesses related to access to the Sporting system in 2015: Filipe Celikkaya, under-19 coach, and Paulo Henriques, former under-16 coach, who acknowledged they had not detected any sign of external access to the respective e-mails.

The trial continues during the afternoon, with inquiries from lawyers António Moreira, Francisco Martins and Maria João Mata and secretary Sónia Pacheco, all connected to PLMJ.

Rui Pinto, 31, is responsible for a total of 90 crimes: 68 of undue access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Federation of Football (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form. This last crime concerns Doyen and was also what led to the pronunciation of the lawyer Aníbal Pinto.

The creator of Football Leaks has been free since August 7, “due to his collaboration” with the Judiciary Police (PJ) and his “critical sense”, but is, for security reasons, inserted in the protection program of witnesses in an undisclosed location and under police protection.