• Cybersecurity, the president of Copasir victim of hackers

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by Celia Guimaraes

29 April 2021 At the moment there is no detailed information on the possible

cyber attack suffered by the president of Copasir, Raffaele Volpi

. From the WhatsApp account on his personal phone, messages were sent to the contacts in the address book asking for credit card numbers ('I bought from the internet but my credit card has expired, can I use yours and make a transfer?'), that Volpi


reported to the postal police.



According to the computer engineer

Pierluigi Paganini

, however, some possible scenarios are extremely worrying: "The incident reported by the media could be the result of a 'SIM Swapping' attack or the compromise of the phone using a malicious code", explains Paganini, an Italian member of the

Enisa

board

, the 'European Union Agency for Cybersecurity

.



"In a 'SIM swapping' attack, he explains, the attacker manages to

get hold of the phone number

of the rightful owner by deceiving the telephone operator with social engineering techniques. The attacker, in fact, manages to get a new SIM, associated with the victim's number, by the operator through a shop or online. If successful, the attacker has a SIM associated with the victim's number and can therefore act in the name and on behalf of the victim. "



This attack also allows the violation of multiple online services that use the telephone number as an authentication system, notes the computer scientist, including "

email services

, instant messaging services like WhatsApp, and even

banking services

in some specific scenarios." 



Another possible scenario of President Volpi's phone attack sees his phone being compromised by means of

malware or malicious code

. "At this point the malware installed on the device allows the attacker to take possession of it and

manage all the apps

installed on it and

access all the data

on it", underlines Paganini. 



How is it possible to infect a mobile phone? "Simply by clicking on a link sent by an attacker or by installing a compromised app. There are also more complex scenarios that involve no action on the part of the victim, but are typically associated with attacks by intelligence agencies or law enforcement agencies and exploit

zero-day holes

, i.e. not publicly known. Generic and unsophisticated malware can be detected with

security software

, but unfortunately in many cases it is easy to bypass even the latter with some precautions ". Considering the role of Copasir president, Paganini argues," both scenarios are disconcerting to say the least. , and I hope we can have more details about it in the next few hours ".