An unidentified Russian hacker group have claimed to have attacked the Italian Ministry of Agriculture. According to the reports, the attack was carried out after the declaration of Giorgia Meloni to further support Ukraine in supplying weapons to Ukraine. The ministry’s website “Politcheagricole” has gone cold since the attack and has stopped responding to the user’s request.
The authorities are looking into the issue and trying to find the culprits behind them. At the time of writing, the hackers behind the attack were yet to be identified.
According to the hacker group’s Telegram channel, which is currently unnamed, the attack used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) service to compromise the ministry website. Moreover, a Russian newspaper reported that the attack seemed to be associated with the recent declarations of Giorgia Meloni to support Ukraine against Russia.
Italian Ministry of Agriculture
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry (MASAF) is yet to recover from the DDoS attack because its website is still unusable, and users and visitors cannot access it. The Italian ministry oversees developing, disseminating, and coordinating agricultural, forestry, and agri-food policies and fishing at the national, European, and international levels and representing Italy within the European Union on matters within his jurisdiction.
Moreover, the attack is not limited to MASAF because, in the past few weeks, hackers have claimed to have hacked other government websites in Italy, like previdenzasocialeitaliana, and the attack continues to other private firms as well. The recent attack on Italy-based 3P gave the hackers 25TB of data from the company. Popular threat groups like Hive ransomware, Royal ransomware gang, and Adrastea group seem particularly interested in Italian companies and government authorities.