Cyber Attack on Italy’s Foreign Ministry, Airports Claimed by Pro-Russian Hackers

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Hackers targeted around ten official websites in Italy on Saturday, including the websites of the Foreign Ministry and Milan’s two airports, putting them out of action temporarily, the country’s cyber security agency said.

The pro-Russian hacker group claimed the cyber attack on Telegram, saying Italy’s “Russophobes get a well deserved cyber response.”

A spokesperson for Italy’s cyber security agency said it was plausible that the so-called “Distributed Denial of Service” (DDoS) attack could be linked to the pro-Russian group.

In such attacks, hackers attempt to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data traffic in order to paralyze it.

The spokesperson said the agency provided quick assistance to the institutions and firms targeted and that the attack’s impact was “mitigated” in less than two hours.

The cyber attack has not caused any disruptions to flights at Milan’s Linate and Malpensa airports, a spokesperson for SEA, the company which manages them, said.

While the websites were inaccessible, the airports’ mobile apps continued to function, the SEA spokesperson added.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari. Editing by Jane Merriman)