Pro-Russian hacker group KillNet plans to attack Italy on May 30

Pro-Russian hacker group KillNet is threatening again Italy, it announced a massive and unprecedented attack on May 30.

Pro-Russian hacker group KillNet is threatening again Italy, it announced a massive and unprecedented attack on May 30.

Pro-Russian ‘hacktivist’ group Killnet is one of the most active non-state actors operating since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

KillNet started its operation on 25 February 2022, prior to this the group appeared to have been selling a cyber tool. The group declared war on Anonymous and Western countries, it has its own Telegram channel with tens of thousands of members.

Cyberknow researchers published a timeline of the attacks conducted by the group:

CyberKnown speculates the group has a semi-formal structured organization, KillNet Order of Battle (ORBAT).

“With different levels of superiority, command lines and tasking. This does suggest that regardless of their sophistication levels, they have a sound level of command and control structure.” reads the analysis published by CyberKnown.

One of the main targets of the gang is Italy, the group has called to action it members providing them a list of Italian targets, including banks, media, energy firms, and more. At this time the attacks haven’t caused any problems to the Italian entities, only three government websites were unreacheable during the first wave of attacks.

Now the group announced a massive attack against Italy, planned on Monday, 30 at 05:00, the collective is also challenging Anonymous which is their adversary.

Below are the messages published by Killnet on Telegram:

“May 30 – 05:00 the meeting point is Italy!” state the messages.“

“I have always been interested in one question: does Russia generally support our activities? Since we will make an irreparable blow in Italy due to the war with Anonymous. Will we at least be remembered in our native land?”

The Italian CSIRT has published an alert to warn of potential risk of cyber attacks against national bodies and organizations has been identified.

Stay tuned …

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Killnet)