Crosetto: “No one is equipped to win the hybrid war”. Cyberattacks and the Interior Ministry Committee

For Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, the situation we are currently facing is unlike any other in the past, because new technologies are also accelerating the problems. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the day before the National Committee for Public Order and Security convened by Piantedosi at the Ministry of the Interior, Crosetto issued an appeal that goes beyond the government’s majority: all branches of the state – from the government to Parliament, from the judiciary to the trade unions, from businesses to universities – should stop fighting amongst themselves and jointly decide on a strategy to tackle a challenge he describes as epoch-making. Tomorrow, the Committee—usually attended by the heads of the various law enforcement agencies—will discuss the risks to public security posed by cyber-attacks, which have multiplied in Italy over the past week.

The first wave began during the night of 1–2 November, when the refrigeration systems at several Coop supermarkets in Sicily, between Catania and Palermo, stopped working properly. Hackers remotely tampered with the control units of fridges and freezers, altering the temperatures and spoiling the goods. The National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN) subsequently detected incidents at a Tuscan catering company and a frozen food manufacturer in Emilia-Romagna, and in the following days reports came in from Molise and Veneto. The pattern mirrored that of the attacks on French supermarkets on 12 October.

This is precisely where Crosetto begins. The problem with these new forms of warfare and terrorism, he explains, is that to strike a company, a community or an entire country, all it takes is a young man living thousands of kilometres away: the same person who could disable a supermarket’s refrigerators could also disable those used to store blood, or blow up a hospital’s electrical system. And then there are the states, with even more sophisticated means. The minister also points out that in recent years, thousands of pieces of health data have been stolen worldwide, stored in the hope of one day being able to decrypt them using quantum computers.

The government is, for now, playing down the damage. Following the meeting on 3 November at Palazzo Chigi with the ACN and the intelligence services, it spoke of a “limited impact”, with no health risks associated with the thawing of the products. The weak point lay in commercial operations with obsolete security systems, interfaces directly exposed to the internet and weak authentication, and ACN director Andrea Quacivi confirmed in Parliament that the attacks were facilitated by out-of-date software.

On 4 November, two pro-Russian hacker groups, NoName057(16) and Z-Pentest, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video posted on social media, threatening further action against “water systems, power stations and industries”. The claim, however, raises doubts: as the Post noted, it contains no details useful for confirming it, neither regarding which shops were targeted, nor how or when. And even ACN has said that it is too early to understand what really happened, because groups such as NoName057(16) try to attract attention by any means possible.

Crosetto has no doubts about who is behind cyber warfare in general: it is Russia, China and Iran. Entrepreneurs such as Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos, he says, want to make money. Those nations, on the other hand, want to weaken democracies and Europe, because for autocracies, societies based on the welfare state are a virus.

The second wave targeted individuals. NoName057 set its sights on 18 people, including Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, Rome’s Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi and the Director of the Postal Police Ivano Gabrielli, publishing their personal details, telephone numbers, email addresses and home addresses on the dark web, and offering money in exchange for further information. Tajani clarified that he was referring to pro-Russian hackers, and not the government in Moscow. According to Crosetto, Tajani is a target because he holds clear, anti-Russian views. Finally, on Thursday, false bomb alerts affected flights across half of Europe, including seven at Fiumicino, Malpensa, Linate and Pescara, with fighter jets scrambled.

But Crosetto’s real concern lies elsewhere, in what he calls ‘cognitive warfare’: the ability of certain organisations to use social media to push people not only to buy a product or go on a holiday, but also to hate the society in which they live and the values of democracy, fuelling anger and violence. It is an issue on which, he admits, he has also been mocked. And interference, he adds, is already happening every day – from Russia, Iran and China – particularly in the run-up to the 2027 general election.

Italy and Europe are defending themselves with cyber agencies, but nowhere in the world is anyone equipped to fight and win the hybrid and cognitive war. The proposal, which Crosetto says he has already put forward to the European Union and NATO, is to change approach: “If we limit ourselves to defending against hybrid warfare attacks, we have already lost”. We must stop hostile actors before they strike, without waiting for the absolute certainty that democracies usually demand before taking action. This is why the Ministry of Defence has called for the establishment of a cyber force – that is, a dedicated armed force. And it is asking platforms such as Meta and TikTok not to wash their hands of the matter, but to put filters in place so that young people are not profiled and manipulated.