(by Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi) How many hacker attacks are carried out every day all over the world, and of these those directed towards Italy, towards our companies or our Ministries? The Russian Kaspersky, one of the most famous computer security companies, recently released a very attractive tool on the web called "Kaspersky cyber-threat real time map". This is an interactive world map in which you can select a country and see some important information associated with it including the position of the aforementioned country in a "particular ranking" dedicated to cyber piracy attacks recorded at that time in every part of the world . The map, which can be handled, enlarged and shrunk, also provides many other information especially on the different types of attacks and the main threats on the web. According to the information made available by Kaspersky Italy in this particular ranking dedicated to the number of hacker attacks, in continuous evolution, is in 11 ° position, therefore subject to numerically very significant attacks. In first place in the ranking is instead Russia while at the 2 ° place Germany, the United States is only in 6 position. That said, a question arises: in Italy are you aware of being subject to so many attacks? And if the answer was positive, then why do not you hear every day about reports of data theft or cyberattacks?
One can not fail to notice that today, now, alongside the traditional domains in which civilization developsà human, the so-called infosphere has been added (term coined a few years to indicate the globality of the information space), i.e. a dimension that also includes cyber space, which in turn is an artificial reality, i.e. created by man, but not virtual, as the information it contains concern the real world and therefore their use can have concrete consequences. At the top of the ranking of countries from which the largest number of cyber attacks in the world originate is the city-state of Singapore (at least if you want to listen to the Israeli company Check Point which monitors the daily progress of attacks through its systems). Singapore also led the World Economic Forum's 2016 Global Information Technology Report, ahead of nations such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Japan. Italy here, just to have a term of comparison, was forty-fifth. Despite this, the Asian city-state suffered one of the most memorable cyber attacks in history at the end of July: nearly 1,5 million personal and health data were stolen from the country's health information system for about a week. The access to this system seems to have occurred through a mechanism called "priviledge escalation", in this way the hackers could have also had the possibility to act with the system administrator credentials and this suggests that the health information system may not be was the only one hit. On the part of hackers, this translates into useful data for activitiesà of social engineering that are aimed, for example, at identity theftà, and in a greater knowledge of the systems interfaced with the health system, obtained through the attack, which could be useful for future cyber attacks. And if even Singapore, the first of its class in the world NRI index (which measures the propensity of states to exploit the possibilities offered by the use of information and communications technologies) ends up finding itself in a hacker attack of such a particular magnitude and media echo, it is legitimate to ask ourselves what could have happened if a country like ours had been attacked and if, once it was understood that it was under attack, the NIS directive would have been respected with particular reference to the obligation to manage the risk that does it foresee the reporting of cyber incidents or would other logic and other interests prevail?
The rest of the world is moving towards a military reorganization that takes into account the new and increased threats, both proceeding with the drafting of national policy documents (this is the case with the cyber strategy documents of China, Japan, Russia and Italy) and tightening relations collaboration or proceeding to the organizational change necessary to face the new trends. To date, however, in the internal legal system and in international law there is still no authorization to carry out cyber attacks. The cyber theme has filled a significant space even at the last NATO summit that took place recently in Brussels, on the other hand collective defense is the best deterrence in the cyber world. The importance of allocating part of the expenditure destined by the Defense to the cybernetic sector was pointed out by the Minister of Defense and at the end of July also by Undersecretary of State Angelo Tofalo, during the visit to the Interforces Command for Cyber Operations (CIOC). A year after its birth, the CIOC's task is twofold and concerns the cyber defense, with which we mean an almost static defense of the network, and the cyber-network-defense, to which is added the ability to perform Vulnerability assessment and penetration test (Vapt), ie a continuous search for vulnerability and network efficiency. Our Defense is owner and manager of a network infrastructure that is comparable, with about 12.000 km of optical fiber and 10.000 Km of radio links, to a real service provider, a position that will be fully achieved with the completion of the Autonomous project System. This makes us think, in the face of the attacks of recent months, the need to have a backup communication network based on older technology (not IP) or otherwise on a separate network. This is known in the military environment but we do not always follow the redundancy rule due to the difficulty of keeping such specific technologies and professional skills in use.
"We have to invest in this military force that is added to those that already existà they work on land, by sea and in the sky, so thaté reach full capacityà operational and can thus begin to conduct cybernetic operations of great strategic value " said in a recent interview General Francesco Dress, commander of the interforces Command for cybernetic operations (CIOC). For the moment there are no precise figures regarding the financial resources available to the Command, but for the future it is planned to double the number of people available and to equip themselves with more infrastructures and info-structures that will allow the CIOC to conduct the first operations. cybernetic. The national defense passeràin fact, increasingly through the cyber domain, with a technological and regulatory evolution that must follow the pace of a rapidly expanding threat.