The Twitter profile of the Ministry of Ecological Transition was hacked during the night, where an image of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin appeared instead of the official photo. Ethereum is one of the world‘s largest providers of cryptocurrencies. The hacking of the Mite site occurred when the company changed its validation system. The hack is thought to be an attempted scam: one of the tweets promised Buterin’s distribution of free cryptocurrencies.
Ispi account also hacked
At the moment the hacked image on the Twitter profile of the Ministry of Ecological Transition that portrayed the founder of Ethereum has been removed. And on the official profile of the ministry, which works regularly, no more images appear. The ministry website works regularly. But the photo of Vitalik Buterin also appears in the profile of the Institute of International Politics (ISPI), also hacked
Analyst: typical cryptocurrency scammers action
“A modus operandi that is typical of groups of scammers who exploit the popularity of cryptocurrencies that in the past had already made famous victims, but not at the level of institutional accounts of the Italian Republic: the official Twitter account of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, with hackers who are exploiting the popularity of the passage to spread their scams ». The analyst and editor-in-chief of Criptovaluta.it, Gianluca Grossi from Abruzzo, commented on the incident.
Another hacker attack on April 4th, system blocked for 1 month
The Ministry of Ecological Transition had already suffered a major hacker attack on April 4 this year. It had become impossible to surf the internet from office computers and access the Ministry’s email. The Mite site and the Via-Vas environmental authorization portal were no longer accessible. The computer system was restored on May 6, after more than a month, but problems remained. Only in the past few weeks has it resumed full operation.