Ransomware cyberattacks have escalated in the past year and a half. Against companies and against infrastructures and institutions (eg the Lazio region).
With the pandemic, we have discovered the danger of viruses, including computer viruses. Governor Zingaretti described the hacker attack on the Lazio health system, which shut down the vaccine reservation platform, as the most serious attack ever in Italy. This will be seen in the coming weeks, certainly not the first. the ransomware attacksAttacking hackers who make infected computer data inaccessible and demand a ransom to get it back are becoming increasingly prevalent. In the case of Lazio, it does not appear that any ransom demand has been officially submitted, but the fact that no data could have been stolen makes the extortion scenario possible. On the other hand, as Stefano Zanero (Politecnico di Milano) explained to Sky TG24, the point is that the Lazio region has publicly announced that it has not started negotiations with the hackers, but it seems that the aim of the attack is to collect a ransom.
The last, most visible example was the May offensive that shut down the US Colonial Pipeline, the main supplier of fuel to the US East Coast. It’s not even the first time the victim has been a health system: In recent weeks, the Irish health system has also been subjected to it, For a ransom note of $20 million that was not successful. With the growing importance of the network, cybercriminals have done good business: in 2020, ransomware attempts have tripled and will increasingly affect large and organized companies, such as The Financial Times reported, and the di SonicWall report.
We use the clause because the data refers only to reported cases of extortion: affected companies can, in fact, be paid to avoid bad publicity, to maintain confidentiality. What experts advise instead is to publicly denounce the attacks and not pay the ransom, to avoid the vicious cycle in which the successes of cyberattacks tend to spread ransomware further.
Attacks have also occurred in Italy: according to the Closet report, in two out of three cases, the goal is to extort money. Since the beginning of the epidemic, companies of the caliber of Enel, Campari, Luxottica and Geox have been involved in the attacks. As the Lazio case made clear, public administrations are also at risk: the government has admitted in the NRP program that 95 percent of PA servers are not in secure conditions, and that a contract to keep sensitive public data management—including healthcare—in a central facility will be on the way. in the coming months.
Listen to an intervention Gabriel Giacoma (Assiteca) a Sky TG24 Business. click here To review the full episode in which they were also guests Antonio Cesarano (intermoney sim) e Paolo Ferrari (electronic work).
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