Translated automatically by AI from the Italian original.
ROME / BOLZANO – The threat of cybercrime and hybrid warfare has now reached the heart of Europe’s major strategic infrastructure. Hackers have targeted Brenner Basis Tunnel (Bbt Se), the company building the huge rail tunnel that will link Italy and Austria beneath the Brenner Pass: a titanic €10.5 billion project 64 kilometres long.
Behind the cyber intrusion is the group known as Everest, a Russian-speaking criminal organisation specialising in digital extortion and large-scale data theft. According to the specialist portal breachsense.com, the group already logged the attack on 17 October, boasting of stealing about 812 gigabytes of company data, the equivalent of roughly 170 DVDs.
Institutional response: Europol calls extraordinary meeting
Faced with a surge in critical incidents – which in recent days in Italy and Europe have included fake aircraft bomb threats and breaches of sensitive data – Europol has called an investigative meeting for next week with police forces from all the countries involved. The aim is to pool the information gathered and coordinate a continent-wide response.
Defence minister Guido Crosetto issued a stark warning about the need to step up vigilance against new forms of threat:
“For four years I have been warning with concern about hybrid warfare. Today everyone seems to be discovering it, along with our vulnerability to cyberattacks. Yet we continue to underestimate other aspects such as cognitive warfare: profiling people, using data and neuroscience to influence behaviour, manipulating information and the ever more pervasive presence of hostile actors in the digital space. Let’s stop chasing threats and start anticipating them.”
Alarm in South Tyrol: “This is not just an IT problem”
Concern over the security of critical infrastructure has also been strongly voiced at local level. The deputy president of the autonomous province of Bolzano and member of the municipal executive responsible for economic development, Marco Galateo, stressed the gravity of the incident:
“The hacker attack on Bbt is an extremely serious matter that we cannot afford to underestimate. This is not just an IT problem: when strategic infrastructure, essential services and productive activities are targeted, we must start thinking in terms of national security and hybrid warfare.”
While the Brenner management company maintains strict confidentiality about any ransom demands or the true extent of the breach, the episode reignites the debate on the need to strengthen cybersecurity units and harden the network of public works and essential services across Europe.
