Cyber activists group has fulfilled its announced campaign of computer attacks
Anonymous Italy does not stop its tasks. As information security and digital forensics expert from the International Institute of Cyber Security announced, the three groups that coordinate operation “Black Week” have today leaked new data in various online sites and databases. Among the leaked data are full names, telephone numbers and email addresses of the employees and officials of various research institutes of the National Research Council, the databases of Equitalia and the Ministry of Economic Development in Italy.
Confidential data leaked belongs to the members of the Lega Nord del Trentino, Fratelli D’Italia and the Democratic Party of the city of Siena, and also include names and surnames of members of Assopolizia (a national Association of Policemen) of Rome and employees of the Central Archives Institute of Italy, which is ironically the institution responsible for developing national standards and guidelines for the creation of digital database and file information systems.
From this incident you can get a couple of conclusions: Anonymous has diversified its aims by attacking the Directorate General for Energy Activities of the Ministry of Economic Development in addition to a site taken at random. Italian officials have been able to verify the information leaked in the databases published by Anonymous, verifying that the names, surnames, telephones and passwords of the workers of some attacked entities present in the databases reported are real. In the case of the employees of the Ministry of Economic Development, experts in digital forensics were able to verify that the leaked data did not correspond to the workers of the Italian Government unit.
According to Professor Rocco de Nicola, a cybersecurity expert at an Italian university, “It is time for anyone who establishes a site to do so with special attention to the privacy and security it will provide to their users’ information”.
Several websites were also harmed during the “Black Week” campaign. This time the turn was for the website of Fratelli D’Italia, a post-fascist party, whose home page has been replaced by the mask of Anonymous. The attacks, the modifications to its pages, the disclosure of the email files, the names and the leaked telephones are part of the commemoration of the anniversary of the so-called “Powder Conjure”, perpetrated by the English revolutionary Guy Fawkes, whose image has become the banner of this group of “cyber activists”.
This attack campaign is also the contribution of Anonymous Italy to the “march of the million masks” against power abuses by any person committed in any part of the world, carried out simultaneously in Milan and Amsterdam. It is also believed that hundreds of people with Guy Fawkes masks will invade the streets of cities and capitals such as London and Brisbane, Germany, Norway, the Philippines and even Nepal.
According to cybersecurity and digital forensics specialists, this protest has been politically motivated since the first Anonymous announcement on October 28, inviting people to react against their governments: “If you see what we see, if you think what we think, and if you look like we do, we ask you to join us and stop accepting the lies and the gag that puts us the state”, mentions the message of the activists.
With this information leaking campaign, Anonymous reaffirms that privacy is not a joke and that an increasingly digital society is an increasingly fragile society.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
