We are faced with mild attacks, more demonstrative than actually harmful, and in fact the NoName 057 group hit smaller domains. Neither the official website nor the app experienced any issues or slowdowns on January 12th.
On the morning of January 12th a hacker attack struck Intesa SanPaolo and several Italian portals and sites. Among these, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Infrastructure, the Consob website, the Carabinieri, the Navy and the Air Force. The attack was claimed by collective No Name 057 on Telegram, the group, made up of pro-Russian hackers, has been carrying out online guerrilla actions for some time. On 28 December, for example, they hit the site of the Milan – Malpensa airport, that of the Milan – Linate airport, and also that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Federtrasporto.
They carry on DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service), they multiply accesses to a site with the aim of clogging up the server that hosts it. Outages do not last long and rarely cause significant damage. And in fact, as the Intesa SanPaolo spokesperson explained to Fanpage.it “over the weekend in terms of cybersecurity there was no impactneither on the app nor on the site, online operations were not affected”. The No Name 057 collective, in fact, affected minor domains, such as proprieta.impresasanpaolo.com.
What happened during the hacker attack
According to NoName 057, the attack began around 10.30 in the morning. On the Telegram channel the group published a list of sites that it would have blocked, including that of Intesa SanPaolo. We carried out several tests on Sunday, but the bank’s official page has always been active. In fact, we are faced with more mild attacks demonstrative which are actually harmful.
Hacker attack on Italy, Intesa Sanpaolo website hit: what the pro-Russian pirates want
The hackers also claimed attacks on the Novara water service site and that of the port of Trieste. Not only that, on Saturday 11 January they would have hit the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Infrastructure, as well as that of Consob, the Carabinieri, the Navy, the Air Force, various local public transport companies and the bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
In the latest attack it appears that NoName 057 he didn’t strike alone. For the first time, coordinated action was reported with Alixseca pro-Palestinian group. On the morning of January 12th the collective targeted the sites of Olidata, Skillbill And Zucchetti. The results of the combined attack were published on the Telegram channel. The attack, explains NoName, was intentional “punish” Italy after the support expressed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky: “Italy should start helping itself and, first of all, your IT security”, they wrote on Telegram.
How the NoName057 group works
The NoName057 collective is a group of pro-Russian activists who use very simple hacker attacks to coordinate disruptive actions. The dynamic is always the same: a goal is announced, usually an institution’s online portal, and then they get started a series of DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of service). They present themselves as a group of hackers who want to defend the interests of Russia, now NoName attacks from 2022 occur on a regular basis.
They never steal data, they do not affect strategic infrastructures, and they do not damage institutions. The biggest achievement for activists is bring home a trophy to exhibit. In fact, after each wave of attacks, self-congratulatory messages and new threats are regularly published on Telegram groups.
