The cyberattack against the website of Lazio, the region of Rome, launched from abroad on the night of Saturday to Sunday, continued on Monday, said the president of the region Nicola Zingaretti.
"
The attacks are still ongoing, the situation is very serious, very serious,
" Nicola Zingaretti said at a press conference.
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“
The attack was very powerful (...) we defend our community from these criminal or terrorist attacks.
Lazio is the victim of a criminal offensive, probably the most serious ever launched on the national territory
”, he continued.
He confirmed that these attacks "
came from other nations
", without specifying which ones, "
we do not know what their origin
", and assured that he had not received any ransom demand to unlock the regional computer system.
“
No ransom demand has been formalized,
” he said.
Attack causes vaccine reservations to stop
The president of Lazio did not want to go into the details of the attack, simply saying that now the competent authorities at national level were dealing with it.
The main avowed consequence of this cyberattack is the stopping of reservations to be vaccinated against Covid-19, with other services in the region operating a little slower than usual.
To reduce the risk of spreading the virus that caused the cyberattack, all computer servers in Lazio have been shut down, said Nicola Zingaretti.
An official from the region confirmed during the press conference that the attack was due to "
ransomware
".
This type of fraud consists of breaking into an entity's networks to encrypt its data, then demanding a ransom, most often in Bitcoins, in exchange for the decryption key.
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Nicola Zingaretti clarified that the home page of the Lazio site did indeed have a link to someone who could solve the problem, but that this page and this link had been transferred to the investigators.
In Italy, investigations into computer crimes, whether cyberattacks or online child crime are carried out by the Postal Police, a national police service with IT experts.
In mid-June, the Italian government had also decided to set up a government agency specializing in cybersecurity to fight against the proliferation of computer attacks and be able to deal in particular with the Russian threat.
