Pro-Russian Group Hacks Italian Government Websites

The pro-Russian hacking group Noname057(16) claimed responsibility for cyberattacks that temporarily disrupted around ten official websites in Italy, including the Foreign Ministry and Milan's airports, as a retaliation against what they described as Italy's 'Russophobia'. The attacks were characterized as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) incidents, overwhelming the targeted systems with excessive data traffic. Italian authorities, including Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, confirmed this was the third attack on the Foreign Ministry within three days, indicating a pattern linked to Russian-backed hackers. In response, Tajani announced the establishment of a new cybersecurity department within the ministry to enhance defenses. Fortunately, despite the website outages, flight operations at Milan's airports remained unaffected, as mobile applications continued to work normally. Ongoing investigations are treating the involvement of the pro-Russian group as a significant lead.