{"id":2660,"date":"2021-06-21T10:49:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T08:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/news\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2026-06-08T23:12:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T23:12:20","slug":"italian-targets-rising-criminal-forums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/emerging-threats\/italian-targets-rising-criminal-forums\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian targets gain traction in criminal forums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Over recent months we have observed exponential growth in cyberattacks and ransomware campaigns. The organization of attacks and the trading of information occurs on increasingly accessible and frequented forums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">We have tracked a marked increase in targeting of Italian entities. Both for obtaining access to organizations and for acquisition of sensitive information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In this specific case, we identified the sale of <strong>1 million<\/strong> sensitive data records related to Italian citizens for USD 150, linked to the <strong>Forex<\/strong> sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The database reportedly contains: name, surname, email, mobile phone number, gender, postal code, and IP address of users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/Immagine-2021-06-21-101150-1024x449-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2670\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In recent weeks we identified specific requests for acquisition of information concerning Italian email addresses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/Immagine-2021-06-21-101214-1024x489-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2669\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">These same posts are frequently replicated across multiple forums and platforms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/Immagine-2021-06-21-102916-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2668\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The proliferation of Italian-targeted data sales and reconnaissance activity on underground forums underscores the necessity for organizations to implement continuous monitoring and <a href=\"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/en\/cyber-threat-intelligence\/\">Cyber Threat Intelligence<\/a> capabilities to detect early indicators of compromise and data exposure. Incident response readiness and threat hunting operations remain critical defensive measures against organized threat actors operating in this ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Underground criminal-forum chatter shows growing interest in Italian organisations: access listings, language preferences and targeting trends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3322,3321,98,182,3256,190,356,367,3323],"class_list":["post-2660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emerging-threats","tag-access-listings","tag-criminal-forums","tag-cyber","tag-intel","tag-italian-targeting","tag-italiani","tag-threatintel","tag-underground","tag-underground-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9915,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions\/9915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}