A suspected cyber assault has taken down the Vatican website. Just days before Pope Francis received criticism from Moscow for his most recent denunciation of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine.
The Vatican website, which hosts prayers, correspondence. Pope pronouncements, was knocked offline on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, several sections of the website were still offline and giving users an error message.
The assault happened after Pope Francis made it seem like Russia was to blame for the war in Ukraine. His earlier comments on the conflict were more subdued.
At this time, it is unclear who was responsible for the alleged cyberattack.
According to Matteo Bruni, a spokesperson for the Holy See, “technical investigations are continuing owing to unusual efforts to access the site.”
In an interview with the religious magazine America Magazine on Monday. Francis stated: “When I speak of Ukraine people.
Without a doubt, the Russian state is the one that invades. This is extremely obvious.
Even if it is obvious who I am criticizing, there are instances. When I attempt to avoid being specific in order to avoid offending and instead criticize in general.
Pope Francis, 85, tweets with the handle @Pontifex and maintains active social media profiles online.
The Pope has previously been the victim of cyber assaults.
Researchers in cyber security named Recorded Future discovered a Chinese cyber-attack. On the internal computer network of the Vatican in 2020. The software known as a “Trojan” a message to a Vatican employee in. Hk in order to access the Holy See’s computer systems.
Whenever the note was opened, a hacker was able to attempt to get access to confidential material regarding the Catholic Faith’s plans for dialogue with the Chinese Catholic Church and has connections to Beijing. The Vatican also introduced a Rosary app in 2019 for tracking prayers.
The connected nature of the world means that whenever anyone makes a statement that offends individuals or groups, then launching even a denial of service attack is a relatively cheap and easy way to voice discontent. The challenge with these kinds of attacks is that they could originate from anywhere in the world and be either state-backed or the work of an individual.
It’s why all organisations need to be mindful of their cybersecurity posture, regardless of their size and vertical. This includes having robust controls and plans in place to deal with incidents and outages.
While the Vatican is, admittedly, a unique target, this attack is just the latest in a long line of suspected state-sanctioned attacks we’ve seen this year. However, it does demonstrate the reach of nation-state cyber attacks, illustrating that they can affect anyone – even The Pope!