Impresa, Portugal’s largest media conglomerate and owners of Expresso newspaper and SIC TV channel, the country’s largest TV channel and weekly newspaper, have been attacked by hackers. 

The media group’s services were inactive on Monday following the hacker attack over the New Year weekend.

Reuters reports that a group called Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for the attacks, publishing messages on the websites saying internal data would be leaked if the media group failed to pay a ransom. The message included an email and Telegram contact information.

Websites of Expresso and SIC have been offline since Sunday, and with the message “temporarily unavailable” following the attack and would return “as soon as possible”.

The attack breached the company’s online information technology server infrastructure, putting both the websites for SIC and Expresso offline, including SIC’s internet streaming service.

At the time of filing this report, broadcast and cable TV services have not been affected.

The hacker group claims that it gained access to Impresa’s Amazon Web Services account, sent a phishing email to Expresso subscribers and tweeted from the newspaper’s verified Twitter account.

Both Expresso newspaper and SIC TV station  said the incident has been reported to the criminal investigation police agency and the National Cybersecurity Centre (CNCS) and would file a complaint.

The coordinator of the CNCS, Lino Santos, told Observador newspaper it was the first time the group launched an attack in the country.