An Italian government website has been unreachable for two days. But it is not known why or when it will be back online. This is the site of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the Mite. Minister Roberto Cingolani himself had warned that there were problems, not on a formal occasion, but speaking of something else, during a radio program: “As I speak to you – said Cingolani on 6 April – we have external threats detected on the Ministry’s IT network and as a precaution we had to suspend the operation of all the Ministry’s IT systems ”. Everything, including emails.
What external threats? Cybercriminals just trying to make some money by seizing the site until a ransom is paid? Or maybe Russian hackers, interested in damaging Italy and one of the key ministries at this stage, the one dealing with energy? We do not know. Since the site was taken offline, not an official statement was leaked from the ministry neither by the newly created national agency that deals with cybersecurity, nor by the Postal Police. Everyone has entrenched themselves behind formulas such as “we are working, we have not yet understood, there are investigations underway”.
But such a prolonged silence on the “scene of a crime” is unjustifiable and alarming: we have the right to know what attack we suffered (and if it was really an attack and nothing else); we have the right to know who manages the information systems of the ministry and if everything possible has been done to prevent problems (obviously not); we have the right to know if the attackers have done damage, stolen relevant documents or address books or otherwise.
Cyber security, we have been learning it over the years, is a serious matter, which concerns us all that we use the Net, and that concerns institutions even more. The war in Ukraine is showing us every day how important hacker attacks are for the security of a country and how important it is to defend oneself. But transparency is also important. Knowing how to communicate what happens does not mean prejudicing the investigation. We have a right to know and we have a duty to take these issues seriously.