Last December 8, a massive cyber attack was recorded against Westpolecloud service provider in Europe.
As this company provides digital services for the Public administration, this hacker operation caused numerous inconveniences for local and government bodies. Specifically, the platform City of Westpole, is a platform used by a total of well 540 municipalities and about 1,300 entities.
Initial investigations identify the attack as a type attack ransomware and, more specifically, to the feared Lockbit 3.0. The campaign, it seems, could interfere with the December payment of employees of some of the affected organizations.
Westpole reported the incident Privacy Guarantor and the Police post, who are investigating what happened. In the meantime ACN (National Cybersecurity Agency) is working to try to recover the data involved in the attack. To do this, about half of the affected data appears to be recoverable via backup. For the remaining information, at least at the moment, recovery seems very difficult.
Public Administration victim of ransomware attack: this is not the first appearance of Lockbit in Europe
According to what emerges from the initial investigations, the hackers appear to have exploited already known exploits to enter the platform.
The presence of LockBit in our country, on the other hand, is certainly nothing new. Last October, for example, several cases of infection were recorded on Europen territory. Despite this, this latest attack has demonstrated how potentially vulnerable the national infrastructure is to ransomware attacks.
He was also the one to express his opinion on what happened Paolo ZangrilloMinister of Public Administration “We are checking, at the moment I don’t see any problems: they told me about hacker attacks, especially attacks intended to create problems in the payment of wages. So far I have received no emergency feedback on this front but I will look into it further now“.