Italy is now in full “hybrid war” with Russia; our banks, transport companies and now also – for the first time – newspapers are privileged targets of cyber activists who for three days in a row have tried to block their sites and digital services. This is what the National Cybersecurity Agency reports to Repubblica, at the end of this action of cyber attacks that comes from the pro-Russian activists “Noname 057 (16)”, already known for these operations.
The impacts were limited, but the day before yesterday there were the first perceptible outside, because it went down for three hours Milan Finance and for two hours Popular Bank of Bari. Attacked yesterday, without consequence, the Corriere della Sera e Panorama.
Russian hackers attack 5 Italian banks. The Cybersecurity Agency: maximum alert, systems intact by Redazione Economia 01 August 2023
The day before yesterday there was a maximum of half an hour of “down” for the Intesa San Paolo site. Only a few minutes for four other banks affected by the attack (Bper, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Fineco). The first day of the attack, on the other hand, targeted a group of transport companies (including Amat of Palermo, Anm of Naples, the Venetian Transport Consortium Company, Cagliari Transport Mobility, Siena Mobility and Sardinian Regional Transport Company); some of the sites were inaccessible for a short time.
The NoName 07 collective clarified on its Telegram channel that it is acting in response to the meeting between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and US President Joe Biden; he considers Italy a “Russophobic” power for the support given to Ukraine and therefore an enemy to be defeated. Noname had already attacked Italy in the past, above all institutional and public transport sites, always with limited impact, but for a few months he had “spared” us. There is now a resurgence of attacks, the Agency noted. It is moreover a critical phase of the war, in the Ukrainian counter-offensive, with the Russian premier Putin who is going all out.
Frattasi: “The banks have reacted well”
“The Italian banks targeted by the recent attacks have reacted well overall. There are no material damages or compromise of customer data”, is the balance of Bruno Frattasifor Repubblica, the director of the Agency.
The reason is that banks are well defended against this type of attack, called Ddos, which aim to saturate the target’s IT resources.
“The reaction capacity of our Csirt, the Computer Emergency Response Team of the National Cybersecurity Agency, which warned the target banks from the first minutes of the attack, favored the prompt reaction of the institutions. The collaboration with CERTFin (the consortium dedicated to the prevention of cybercrime in the banking sector) and the government authorities, has allowed for an adequate response”, continues Frattasi.
Csirt similarly helped the affected media yesterday, alerting them as early as around 8am. “It is important to remember that in the rare cases in which there is a service interruption, the same Ddos attack can have different impacts in relation to the relevance of the affected web services both in terms of size and relevance of the impacted customers, and of reputational and financial damage ”.
“Hybrid war against Italy”
“What we are witnessing is a new wave of DDOS-type hacker attacks now aimed at Italy at the hands of the already well-known pro-Russian group called NoName057, responsible for several months of the same actions against various Western countries”, he adds Gianluca Galasso, Head of Operations at the Agency. “These actions are part of a form of hybrid warfare as a form of propaganda above all to increase the internal cohesion front of the galaxy of hacktivists and cybercriminals that revolves around the supported country”, continues Galasso.
In short, it is confirmed that there is a hybrid war between Italy and Russia. But also that Italy, at least for now, also thanks to the help of the cyber agency, is defending itself well.