ROME, MAY 11 (ANSA) – A cyberattack by Russian hackers hit several websites in Italy on Wednesday, including the portals of the Ministry of Defense, the Institute of Higher Health (ISS) and the Italian Senate.

Italian officials said this time the action was not the work of ransom-seeking criminal groups, but of the pro-Russian militant collective ‘Killnet’, which according to many experts is linked to the Moscow armed forces.

Killnet, which will also try to block the Eurovision voting system in Turin, threatened Italy with a message on social media saying “this could be the beginning of the end”.

The group claimed the attack on their Telegram channels and published the list of hacked websites. In total, seven pages were affected: from the Senate; Ministry of Defense; ISS; Italian Automobile Club; Kompass portal, which brings together thousands of companies and market analyzes; Institute of Advanced Studies dealing with digital technology in Lucca; and Infomedix, a service company.

The National Cyber ​​Security Agency is “working closely with affected governments to restore websites, analyze the phenomenon, as well as recommend initial appropriate technical measures”.

According to experts, the attack is a DDos (Distributed Denial of Service in English), meaning the site is the target of thousands of access requests that have lost control and rendered it inaccessible. Basically, huge amounts of data are sent to the servers at the same time using multiple sources, so the website is flooded with fake requests that slow down or hinder its operation.

In general, actions do no harm, but take out service and therefore do not compromise IT infrastructure. According to the researches, the attack did not actually damage the systems and no data was lost.

According to Elisabetta Casellati, head of the Italian Senate, “There is no data on the hacker attack involving the Senate’s external network”. “Thanks to the technicians for their prompt response. These are serious incidents to be taken lightly,” he wrote on Twitter.

The Ministry of Defense denied the attack in a statement. “The General Staff, referring to the news that the www.difesa.it site cannot be reached, states that this is due to the maintenance works planned to be carried out on the site for a while.” (ANSA)