ROME: Italy has thwarted “a series of cyberattacks” of “Russian origin” targeting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the foreign minister said Wednesday (Feb 4), as security operations ramp up with just hours to go before the opening ceremony.
The attacks were “on foreign ministry offices, starting with Washington, and also some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina”, Antonio Tajani said during a trip to the US city.
His office did not provide further details, nor did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) immediately respond to a request for comment.
But 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 missiles on websites,” read a statement on a Telegram channel purporting to represent the group Noname057.
DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks halt access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic.
AFP was not able to immediately verify the account’s ownership but its statements appear to match those cited by cybersecurity analysts online.
The group said it had attacked the websites of several hotels in Cortina d’Ampezzo, one of the towns hosting events for the February 6-22 Games.
Access to one of them remained blocked on Wednesday afternoon.
