Ministries, banks and carabinieri hacked. A Russian collective claims: “Italy sends weapons to Ukraine”

Giorgia Meloni’s visit to Kyiv is said to be the reason for some hacker attacks which, starting this morning, have involved a dozen websites of public and private entities in Italy. The postal police and sources close to the National Cybersecurity Agency confirm the incident, while on Telegram, the pro-Russian hacker collective NoName057 claimed responsibility for the attack. “Italy – defined as “Russophobic” – will provide Ukraine with a sixth package of military aid which will include three types of air defense systems”, writes the group, mentioning the words of the premier who yesterday in a press conference with Zelensky referred to Samp/T, Skyguard and Spik. According to the group itself, several Italian institutional sites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, the Carabinieri, Bper Banca and A2A, would have ended up in the hackers’ sights. At the moment all these sites are accessible.

The national authority is analyzing the incident and many services have been restored. An alert was given immediately after the attacks and, the sources explain to some agencies, they reacted immediately. From a technical point of view, it was a DDos (Denial of service) action.

“We are following the events. The Acn has been dealing with what was happening since this morning”, the sources explain to AdnKronos. Many services were promptly restored; an alert was given and the constituency as a whole “reacted very well”. Some service was restored immediately some not yet. “It is not a volumetric attack – reports AdnKronos – which has created the problems, but it is a direct attack on applications and therefore more complex”.

Today’s attack is only the latest in a series of attacks that Italy has suffered in recent months. The other European countries also keep the alert threshold high. Just this morning, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explained in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper that, with the Russian aggression of Ukraine, for Germany “the threat of espionage, disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks” from Moscow has taken on “a different dimension”. Overall, according to a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SpD), the cybersecurity situation has “deteriorated further”. This judgment is also shared by some German associations that deal with computer security. “In most cases, it is not clear whether cybercriminals are acting on their own behalf or on behalf of the Kremlin,” said Achim Berg, president of the Federal Association of Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (Bitkom) , who added: “We assume that this trend will continue and it cannot be ruled out that attacks in cyberspace will increase dramatically if the war in Ukraine escalates further.”