Russian and Chinese hackers allegedly stole confidential information by entering the computer network of Italy’s Permanent Representation to the EU
According to an article published on the website of the newspaper La Repubblica, Italy between 2013 and 2016 suffered several hacker attacks by Russian and Chinese hackers who were looking for confidential information.
The stolen data concerns all the most important decisions of the European Union in recent years: from sanctions on Russia, through the negotiations for the doubling of the Nord Stream pipeline to the migrant issue. To obtain this information, the hackers managed to enter the computer network of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU and the computers of some employees of the Farnesina. High officials and ambassadors from all over the world also fell into the hackers’ trap.
How the hackers acted
According to La Repubblica, the hackers infected the computers of the computer network of the Permanent Representation of Italy to the European Union through the malware “Uroburos”, a virus created by the hacker group Apt 28, which allegedly has links with the Russian intelligence services, but there is no evidence to support this. Russian hackers are not the only ones to have attacked Italian networks, Chinese hackers have also managed to steal strategic information. In fact, the incursions of the hacker groups K3Chang and Zegost have been recorded. The suspicious activity of the hackers coincides with the moments when the European Union has taken important decisions on foreign policy, from sanctions against Russia to the agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue.
The attack method of the hackers to spread the “Uroburos” malware is always the same: sending an email inviting the user (in this case ambassadors and officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to click on a link. As soon as the new page is opened, the malware is automatically downloaded and the computer and the entire network is infected. A practice used millions of times, but every time it manages to do damage.
Between 2013 to 2016 hackers managed to get hold of 1760 messages, again according to the newspaper La Repubblica. And to end up in the network of hackers there would also be ministers and council presidents, spied on several times during the last years. A problem, that of cybersecurity, that only in the last year has been taken seriously by the Government: in March the “National Plan for Cyber Protection and Cybersecurity” was drafted, the first step to solve the issue once and for all.