In the night between Saturday and Sunday, the computer systems of the Lazio Region were hit by a “ransomware”, that is, a computer attack that aims to block the victim's data and systems with the aim of obtaining a ransom (ransom, in English) . The attack hit the Data Processing Center (CED), the computer system that manages the entire regional IT structure, which was consequently disabled by the Region's technicians.
Among other things, the computer systems of the regional campaign for administering the coronavirus vaccine were also affected by the attack, and this caused some inconveniences that were seen on Sunday.
Throughout Sunday, and at least until Monday morning, both the Lazio Region website and all associated services and the regional platform for booking vaccination appointments remained unreachable. As Repubblica wrote, with the computer systems blocked, the vaccination campaign was slower than usual, because the operators had to do on paper part of the data recording work that is usually done through the computer system.
The councilor for health, Alessio D'Amato, however, has made it known that “there has been no interruption” of the vaccination campaign and that all vaccine administrations already booked will be made. The possibility of booking new administrations, however, is blocked for now. The data of the people vaccinated in these days, who before the attack were registered in the regional vaccination register, will be provisionally registered in the national register, D'Amato said, although it is not yet clear whether this will have consequences on various aspects of the campaign, such as the automatic issuance of Green Passes.
On Sunday, the president of the Region, Nicola Zingaretti, defined the hacker attack as “very heavy” and “a very serious fact, which blocks a fundamental service”.
The information on the attack is quite sparse for now, but the Italian newspapers reported that on Sunday evening the technicians of the Region would have found in the systems a ransom request to be paid in bitcoin, for an unspecified sum. For now, there is no information on who could have carried out the attack, and it is not clear whether the attack led to the theft of data.
Work to restore the systems began immediately, as did the investigations, which are being handled by the postal police. On Monday, a team of experts from the National Cybercrime Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures will arrive at the Regional headquarters to provide help to local technicians already engaged since Sunday.
The CED of the Lazio Region manages the health data of 5.8 million people and keeps, in addition to detailed personal data, also medical records and histories. It also manages numerous regional data and services not related to the health sector, on whose status there is little information for now.
