The Csirt, the team of the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN), reveals that Italy is in the crosshairs of coordinated attacks by several hacking groups, mostly Russian. The news comes after the website of the Ministry of Agriculture was under attack over the weekend, but the cybercriminals were unable to break into the private information on the servers.
According to ACN, these would be demonstrative attacks, therefore not having the purpose of obtaining sensitive data. Despite this, the Agency recommends “keep attention high” regarding the IT security of its sites. In particular, the threats occur through DDoS attacks and, according to the Csirt report, these are not destined to disappear in the short term.
Hacker attacks in Italy: who is behind it?
The threats would mostly come from groups of Russian hacktivists, who had already hit the European Parliament website in recent weeks. On that occasion, the group responsible for the attack was identified in Killnet (which we talked about in detail here).
In the case of the recent hacker attacks in Italy – such as the one on Saturday on the website of the Ministry of Agricultural Policies – the culprits have been identified in the Russian crew No name 057 (16). This was born in March, right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The group showed off with several attacks, all demonstrative, against government entities and strategic infrastructures. The malicious campaigns have affected both Ukraine and Western countries that have offered support to the invaded country. Specifically, the institutional sites of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Norway and Finland were attacked.