The telecommunications operator led by Mário Vaz recalls that on February 7 there was a “blackout”. “They turned off schools, hospitals and firefighters, companies, families, people, turned off the lives of millions of Portuguese people”, points out Vodafone.

“We don't know, and maybe we'll never know, why. Perhaps the idea that they could destroy what we are, what we work and build every day, with employees, customers, partners, the State and civil society”, he continues.

“We know that technology has astronomical power, but what sets us apart is what we do with it”, he underlined, asserting that, on the operator's side, it “will always be at the service of good”.

Vodafone Portugal was the target of a cyberattack that affected its network and its four million customers. “We will always be on the right side, this is the strength that they will never be able to erase”, concludes the operator in the open letter.

In this unprecedented attack, Vodafone was confronted, at around 9pm on February 7, “with an abrupt interruption of almost all” of its communications services, with the exception of the fixed Internet service and an “expressive part of television customers”, said the operator's executive president, Mário Vaz, at a press conference the following day.

“To have an idea of ​​the scale and purpose of this attack was clearly to make our network unavailable and with a level of severity to make it as difficult as possible to recover services”, underlined the manager, at the time.

The operator has said that there are no indications that customer data has been accessed and/or compromised.