The hacker attack that hit the Lazio Region started from the “violation of a user of an employee in smartworking“. This was stated by the Lazio health councilor, Alessio D’Amato, interviewed by Italian Tech.” They hit in a particular moment, in a moment of smartworking, when the level of attention is lowered. We need to take a step forward at the country level “on cybersecurity issues, added the commissioner. The other new element that emerged today is that”data backup has also been encrypted, and it is the most serious element. The data have not been violated but have been immobilized “, as D’Amato confirmed. The Lazio health councilor did not hide the concern for what is happening in these hours:” We are at war, as if under a bombing. You can count the buildings that are standing and those that have collapsed, “he said.
TechTalk, the cyber attack on the Lazio Region: what happened and what can happen
What is certain is that the “powerful attack” mentioned by the Lazio health councilor induced the defenders to turn off the machines and delay the vaccination campaign, the speed of which was also guaranteed by the adoption of the IT procedures on which Laziocrea supervised. 60 hours after the first attack the sites are still all unreachable.
And there is another certainty: at least one large company that the murmurs in the network had linked to the attack, namely Engineering, with a note from her Cso, the Cyber Security Officer Marco Tulliani, came out with a brief note to customers where she confirms that she was attacked, but excludes any connection with what happened to the Lazio Region:
“On 30/7, attempts of unauthorized activity on some company systems by a user credential were identified. The immediate checks confirmed the non-lawfulness of the operations and the non-recognition by the user of such attempts, thus blocked in the bud. As a precaution, we immediately extended the double authentication factor to the entire Engineering group in order to further raise the level of security. The intervention involved a partial halt of activities today, 2 August, which were successfully resolved in the early afternoon. All the analyzes and investigations carried out exclude a correlation between what has been described and the events concerning the Lazio region “.
“At the moment there is no ransom demand, but we must let the investigations take their course “, said Nunzia Ciardi, director of the Postal and Communications Police to ItalianTech. Meanwhile, the prosecutor is investigating for” unauthorized access to a computer system and attempted extortion “. Today the hearing at Copasir of Lamorgese, tomorrow it’s up to the head of Dis Belloni.
Analyses
This is why the hacker attack on the Lazio Region is just the beginning
by Arturo Di Corinto
According to the latest IBM cybersecurity report, the percentage of companies where attacks on corporate systems have been aided by remote working is very high: 17.5 percent in 2020. Furthermore, organizations that had more than 50 per percent of their workforce working remotely took 58 days longer to identify and contain violations than those with 50 percent or less working remotely.
“We have seen the news on the hacker attack on the health portal of the Lazio region. The Commission takes this matter very seriously”. This was stated by Sonya Gospodinova, spokeswoman for the European Commission. “We are committed to having a secure and reliable network for citizens and businesses, which means having a resilient space that is safe against cyber attacks. Particularly for strategic sectors such as energy, transport, health and national services,” he added.
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