ANCONA – International geopolitical tensions, but also the upcoming European elections, may entail a greater risk in terms of hacker attacks and from the point of view of the spread of fake news. «At the moment, due to international geopolitical tensions, there is an ongoing resurgence of events attributable to government-commissioned cyber attack campaigns and given the escalation of these tensions it is possible to foresee a further increase in attacks» explains the professor Marco Baldiassociate in Telecommunications at the Department of Information Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Marche.
In short, the attacks are growing and could grow further. The numbers for 2023 already showed an increasing trend at a national level. Based on the latest report from the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN), presented in Parliament in recent days, during 2023 there were 1,411 cyber attacks handled by the ACN, 29% more than the previous year. The number of affected subjects has almost tripled, rising from 1,150 to 3,302. There was also a sharp increase in accidents (from 126 to 303) and reports (from 81 to 349). However, the communications received by the Agency decreased (-8%) (from 5,974 to 5,444).
The Agency’s Csirt Italia – Computer Security Incident Response Team – handled on average around 117 attacks per month, with a peak of 169 in October. Of these, 303 were classified as accidents (that is, they had an impact confirmed by the victim), for an average of around 25 per month. In 13 cases, ACN experts intervened on site to support those affected, while in 31 cases they provided support remotely.
The greatest number of attacks (319) were of the Ddos (Distributed denial of service) type: that is, a site is blocked by flooding it with access requests. In 275 cases, however, there was the spread of malware via email, 240 were cases of phishing (sending false emails to steal sensitive information) and 165 were cases of ransomware (cyber attack with ransom demand). The sectors most affected are telecommunications (216), followed by central public administration (201) and local public administration (140).
A picture brought about by the acceleration of digitalisation which occurred following the Covid-19 pandemic, which pushed everyone, both for relating and for working, to make greater use of devices such as mobile phones, tablets and PCs , and the use of smartworking.
The ‘digitalisation’ of personal and professional life, explains Professor Baldi, in fact «increases the attack surface due to the greater sharing of data not only through social networks, but also with wearable devices (ed.) which being always connected to the Internet, they take data from the body, from home and driving assistants. The more we connect and the more we digitize, the more we expose ourselves to cyber attacks.”
How to defend yourself? According to the expert, greater governance of these digital devices is needed, which means having greater awareness of how much information is shared about one’s personal and professional life. Returning to the topic of geopolitical tensions, Professor Baldi explains that «state-sponsored attacks are the most dangerous, as these offensive devices can carry out undercover missions in the cyber domain, with propaganda actions, retaliation, influence of public opinion and with the spread of fake news”.
In the cyber world, it is not just adults who are exposed, minors, who come into contact with technology and mobile devices at an increasingly early age, are among the most at risk. The expert’s recommendation in this case is to prevent since «in the event that personal data is stolen it is impossible to delete it from the entire network, it will remain in the public domain. The focus in this range is on apps, social networks, games and audiovisual content, for the latter there is a ‘Pegi’ classification with an indication of the minimum recommended age. «Minors are at risk of social engineering (a cyber attack technique based on the study of people’s behavior) – he explains – of cyber bullying and revenge porn, as well as identity and personal data theft».
As regards the risk linked to the next European elections «the manipulation of images of crisis and war scenarios, created to shift citizens’ political and voting opinion, has now been proven: this was already seen in the last American elections, but today we are no longer at year zero and systems for the certification of online information are starting to emerge. For now, however, the best defense remains personal attention to verifying sources. In addition to international influences, there will also be internal ones and there is already a rush for consultants and tools for political promotion through digital infrastructures. The risk is that information is projected that is the result of hyperbole or alterations of the real proportions of phenomena and facts that actually happened.”
