It's interesting the attack to one of Italy's PEC system providers went unnoticed abroad.
PEC (electronic certified mail) system is used to send and receive a lot of sensitive emails - and in many situations is now mandatory to use it for document exchanges with government and its agencies.
It looks 500,000 accounts have been attacked on November 10, of which tens of thousand used by government and its agencies, courts included. Actually, when the provider (not disclosed, but many sources says it's TIM) shut down the system to avoid bigger damages, courts were badly hit, as their operations were blocked.
Sources say the activity on 10th were a recon, while the full-blown attack was started on 12th. The provider notified the police the following day, but on 14th the systems were shutdown to contain the attack.
Italy's government and its law enforcement agencies, including the "cyber" ones, kept a very low profile - even when the news became public, although they hinted about a foreign source.
Affected users should have been notified, but the real extent of the breach is not known.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
