Italy has thwarted a series of Russian cyberattacks targeting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the Italian minister of foreign affairs said on Wednesday.
The attacks were “on foreign ministry offices, starting with Washington, and also some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina,” Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Antonio Tajani said.
His office said the attacks had affected about 120 sites, including Italy’s embassy in Washington, but had since been “effectively neutralized.”
Photo: AFP
A Russian hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was in response to the Italian government’s support for Ukraine.
“The pro-Ukrainian course of the Italian government leads to the fact that support for Ukrainian terrorists is punishable by our DDoS [distributed denial-of-service] missiles on Web sites,” a Telegram channel purporting to represent the group Noname057 wrote on the app.
DDoS attacks halt access to a Web site by overloading its servers with traffic.
The group said it had attacked the Web sites of several hotels in Cortina d’Ampezzo, one of the towns hosting events for the Games. Access to one of them remained blocked on Wednesday afternoon.
Italy has deployed about 6,000 police plus nearly 2,000 military personnel across the Games area, which stretches across half a dozen sites from Milan to the Dolomites.
Bomb disposal experts, snipers, anti-terrorism units and skiing police officers are among those deployed.
The Italian Ministry of Defense is also providing 170 vehicles plus radars, drones and aircraft.
Security is particularly focused on Milan, where political leaders including US Vice President J.D. Vance are expected for today’s opening ceremony.
The issue has become a fraught topic after it emerged that agents from the controversial US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be present.
Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi said ICE agents would not be patrolling the streets of Milan.
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arm would operate within US diplomatic missions only, “are not operational agents” and “have no executive function,” he said.
It was standard for countries to send security officials to the Olympics, with Italy having sent them to Paris for the 2024 Games, Piantedosi said.
“ICE does not and will never be able to carry out operational police activities on our national territory,” he said.
The HSI investigates global threats, and is separate from the department carrying out the US immigration crackdown that has sparked widespread protests.
US Ambassador to Italy Tilman Fertitta said the HSI would be “strictly advisory and intelligence-based, with no patrolling or enforcement involvement.”
“At the Olympics, HSI criminal investigators will contribute their expertise by providing intelligence on transnational criminal threats, with a focus on cybercrimes and national security threats,” he said.
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