Pro-Russian hackers have published personal information about Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and other senior European officials on a dark-web site and offered cryptocurrency for more details about the targets and their families, according to The Record¹.

Tajani said Saturday the campaign was meant to intimidate him over Italy's support for Ukraine, writing on X that cybercriminals had posted his personal data and were targeting his family¹. "They are also targeting my family," Tajani wrote¹.

Cybersecurity researchers who examined the material linked the campaign to NoName057(16), a pro-Russian hacktivist group known for distributed denial-of-service attacks against Ukraine and European countries that support Kyiv¹.

The group published profiles of 18 European politicians, law-enforcement officials and journalists, including phone numbers, email addresses, social-media accounts and, in some cases, home addresses, The Record reported¹. Named targets included Eurojust President Michael Schmid, Europol European Cybercrime Centre chief Edvardas Sileris, German Federal Criminal Police Office President Holger Münch, Rome prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, Italian Postal Police chief Ivano Gabrielli, Aviano mayor Paolo Tassan-Zanin and three German journalists who have covered Russian hacking¹.

The Record said the campaign appeared to follow a July 2025 international law-enforcement operation coordinated by Europol and Eurojust that took more than 100 of the group's servers offline¹. Italian media cited in The Record said several people on the list, including Lo Voi and Gabrielli, were involved in that investigation, and Italian prosecutors are investigating the publication of the data¹.

Asked about the incident, the Russian Embassy in Italy dismissed the allegations, The Record reported, saying officials stay away from the dark web¹. Tajani said Sunday that G7 foreign ministers would discuss recent cyberattacks attributed to pro-Russian groups in Paris and that he was not accusing the Russian government of directing the attacks¹.

On Monday in Paris, Tajani told ANSA English that hybrid attacks targeting Italy are the work of pro-Russian hackers². "The hybrid attacks targeting Italy are definitely the work of pro-Russian hackers," Tajani said².

He said Italy does not know whether the government itself is behind them, that the hackers are pro-Russian by their own admission, and that simultaneous attacks across Europe show some coordination². He was answering a question about a French investigation that points to Iran's Revolutionary Guards as responsible for such attacks².

NoName057(16) emerged after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, recruits volunteers on Telegram and has continued to claim attacks on European targets despite last year's crackdown, The Record reported¹. Claims of industrial-system attacks, including recent supermarket refrigeration incidents, have not always been independently verified¹.