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On Monday, Italy’s Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) issued an urgent warning about the significant danger of cyberattacks against national entities.

DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) is the sort of cyberattack that the Italian firm refers to, which may not be utterly devastating but can nevertheless cause financial and other harm due to service failures and interruptions.

The public notice said that there are still signals and threats of probable imminent assaults against national public enterprises, private companies providing public utility services, or private entities whose image is associated with Italy.

A pro-Russian hacktivist group

The signs are Telegram postings from the Killnet organization inciting ‘massive and unprecedented’ assaults against Italy. Killnet is a pro-Russian hacktivist organization that launched an attack on Italy two weeks ago, employing an ancient but still powerful DDoS tactic called ‘Slow HTTP.’

As a result, CSIRT’s advised defensive actions this time are related to this sort of assault, but they also include a variety of general security recommendations.

Last Tuesday, Killnet issued “Operation Panopticon,” a 72-hour call for 3,000 “cyber warriors” to enlist. Last week, the group renewed the call-to-action multiple times.

‘Operation Panopticon’

The necessary sign-up form requests information on the volunteers’ systems, origins, ages, Telegram accounts, and the tools needed to execute resource-depletion assaults. While DDoS appears to be the primary purpose, it’s possible that Killnet intends to utilize it to force defenses to cope with service outages rather than aggressive cyberattacks.

Killnet presented an etymological definition of the phrase Panopticon today and innuendos about data leaks, and a warning that 90% of the country’s leaders will ‘go crazy.’

Killnet’s recent targeting of firms in various countries, including Italy, for backing Ukraine’s anti-Russian opposition is the outcome of the group’s recent targeting of entities in several countries, including Italy. This prompted Anonymous Italy to launch an attack against Killnet, doxing some of its members by posting images on social media.