Hacker attack in the Lazio Region, “two hypotheses of virus propagation”

The hacker attack on the Lazio Region? “A serious indication of the weakness of IT infrastructures, not only of the Public Administration but in general of all large organizations”: this is the comment by Nicola Mugnato co-founder of Gyala, the Italian startup that designs cybersecurity systems made in Italy, on cyber attack that in recent days hit the Lazio vaccination portal. Read also “To date it is not possible to make evaluations without having certain information on what happened; in fact, we are not able to say which was the vehicle of attack or which vulnerability of the system was exploited to allow the infiltration of malware into the system, what we know for sure – continues the expert – is that to hit the infrastructure was a ransomware, a so-called ‘ransom virus’. These viruses in fact encrypt the files and make them inaccessible, then ask the victim, in this case the Region, to pay – usually bitcoin or other electronic currencies. “But how do these viruses spread within the systems?” two – explains Mugnato -: either one of the servers exposed on the internet had vulnerabilities that were used to install the ramsonware or, and it would be an even worse scenario, the virus has spread from within and therefore there are configuration errors in the segregation of the back office networks with the front-end. “Beyond the serious inconveniences, now what is worrying is the fragility of the IT infrastructures and the protection of sensitive citizens’ data if somehow there has been, says Mugnato. from Gyala: “Cyber ​​security must increasingly become a strategic asset for the development of public and private companies, facts like this are far from isolated episodes and the pandemic has only exacerbated This picture”.