A cyber attack is underway on several Italian government sites, including that of Senate and of Defence. The attack has already been claimed by the Russian pro-government collective Killnet. At the moment, the attack would not have compromised the infrastructure, but it is making access to the various sites difficult. In the afternoon, the website of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and the ACI were put ofline among others.
The group also attacked several German and Polish sites, claiming them on their own channel Telegram. The attack comes in the days when Prime Minister Mario Draghi is on an official visit to Washington to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the West’s counter-moves to the Russian invasion.
The hacker attack, probably a DDOS
The attack, from what we are able to estimate at the moment, is a Ddos attack (acronym for Distributed Denial-of-Service), which is the most widespread cyber attack to put an Internet site off-line. It is about a coordinated offensive of requests to the server hosting the site by a series of remotely controlled infected computers. The so-called ‘botnet’.
What is Killnet and what part does it play in the Russian Legion group
The hacker group Killnet is one of the most active Russian hacker groups. During the war in Ukraine they claimed similar attacks on Romanian, Polish and some American corporate sites. Today the group is linked to the collective Legion, which brings together groups of Russian hackers who aim to attack the sites of Western institutions and companies. On their own Telegram channel they declared that their goal was to attack “the NATO countries and Ukraine”.
The Legion collective presents itself as a Russian version of Anonymous. Perlomento emulate the language and aesthetics of messages and images. But unlike Anonymous, which openly sided in favor of Ukraine after the Russian invasion, Legion supports actions in favor of Russia.
The indiscretions on the identity of the creators of Killnet
Killnet, on the other hand, is a hacker group that became quite well-known after April 3, 2022, since another group of hackers, Blue hornet, released some personal data of some of its leaders and revealed the existence of the botnet called Killnet. From what was widespread, it was learned that the leaders are probably between 20 and 21 years old. One of these, indicated by the acronym VD, would be resident in Belgorod, Russia, not far from the border with Ukraine. A cryptocurrency wallet would also be linked to him.