The December pay and year-end bonuses for employees of local authorities affected by the massive attack of Russian hackers from Lockbit on the Walpole company, whose cloud infrastructure is used by PA Digitale, a company providing services to about 1,300 public administration entities, have been safeguarded. This was communicated by the National Cybersecurity Agency, stating that ten days after the offensive, the actions taken to contain the damage "have enabled the restoration of all affected services, as well as the recovery of data targeted in the attack for over 700 national and local public entities linked to the supply chain of PA Digitale." For the remaining administrations, it adds, "there is a need to recover data dating back to the 3 days before the attack, which occurred on December 8." The offensive had encrypted and made several databases inaccessible. Lockbit's claim came with a ransom request in cryptocurrency by the cybercriminals. However, the Minister for Public Administration, Paolo Zangrillo, assures, "We are verifying; at the moment, I am not aware of any issues. So far, I have not received emergency feedback on this front, but I will now delve deeper into the matter." The Postal Police is investigating, while the Privacy Guarantor has also been notified. The ransomware - a virus that takes devices hostage - was launched last December 8 against a series of servers in Milan and Rome of Westpole, the development company whose cloud infrastructure is used by PA Digitale: this is the private company of the Buffetti group, which provides services to hundreds of public administration entities, including payroll accounting and electronic invoicing. One of the affected systems is Urbi, the cloud software for digital management services (demographic, registry, payment of municipal employee salaries) used by approximately five hundred Municipalities, some Provinces, several Unions of Municipalities and Mountain Communities, and entities including the Agency for Digital Italy, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, and the National Anti-Corruption Authority.
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