“The hack attack? Perhaps a diversion that hides a more complex strategy”

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A large-scale cyber attack was launched on Friday, February 3, exploiting a known vulnerability discovered two years ago in VMware’s EXSi servers for which there is already a patch update as of February 23, 2022. The main impact appears to have focused on France , from where many reports of ransom demands came from criminals who managed to install a ransomware by exploiting that cyber hole.

In our country, on the other hand, the consequences were very limited and a meeting held between the Undersecretary of the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano, the General Manager of Acn Roberto Baldoni and the director of the Information and Security Department, Elisabetta Belloni, pointed out that , even if the attack can be classified as serious, “no institution or primary company operating in critical sectors for national security has been affected”.

But there is another possible scenario: Giuseppe Mocerino, president of the company specialized in business digitization and cybersecurity Netgroup, argues that the scenario could be far more complex.

The attack was indicated as an event possibly unrelated to geopolitical events and launched by cybercriminals interested in gaining economic advantage. Perhaps you are not so convinced. What’s the problem?

«What is not convincing in this attack is above all the scale detected. VMware claims to have tens of thousands of installations in Italy, but would the affected servers have been a handful, an insignificant number? Why weren’t the others affected? Are we sure they really were ignored?”