Italy’s Interior Ministry hacked in bid to trace Beijing dissidents

 ROME – Chinese hackers have stolen the personal data of 5,000 Digos officers, Italy’s specialist anti-terrorist and intelligence police, in an apparent bid to track Beijing dissidents living in Italy and identify the agents protecting them, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano and Repubblica. 

 

 Digos are responsible for monitoring dissident communities and extremist groups. The Interior Ministry confirmed Thursday that the breach, which took place between 2024 and 2025, was of “Chinese origin.” 

 

 Hackers penetrated the ministry’s network and downloaded confidential personnel files from police stations across the country. The Department of Public Security said in a statement that the attacks were “aimed at attempting to locate dissident Chinese citizens present in Italian terriroty and to identify Digos officers engaged in investigative activities against Chinese groups operating in Italy.” 

 

 The ministry added that no data relating to sensitive operational activities appears to have been exfiltrated, suggesting the contents of the Prato prosecutor’s ongoing investigations into Chinese organised crime remain secure. However, Repubblica’s Lirio Abbate reported, without official denial, that the personal data of agents is now in the hands of cyber criminals. 

 

 Michele Colajanni, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Bologna, told Il Fatto Quotidiano that the stolen identity alone would not be sufficient to locate dissidents. “Other sensitive data would also come into play, for example the location of the agents and the times of their shifts,” he said. 

 

 Colagianni warned that the risks extended to both the dissidents themselves, whom he likened to mafia informants, and to the officers assigned to monitor them. The Interior Ministry characterised the operation as espionage rather than sabotage, the goal being intelligence-gathering rather than disruption. 

 

 The attack is the latest in a worsening pattern. Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency recorded a 53 percent rise in cyber incidents in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, with serious attacks, those with confirmed impact, nearly doubling. 

 

 Affected Digos officers were reportedly notified by security authorities as soon as the theft was discovered, ahead of a meeting at the Prato prosecutor’s offices on Nov. 25.

 

 The timing is notable. On the same day, a Chinese delegation led by an assistant to the Minister of Public Secueity, Zhongyi Liu, arrived at the Tuscan magistrates’ offices to discuss a framework for judicial cooperation between Italy and China. 

 

 In Tuscany, and particularly in Prato, which is home to one of Europe’s largest Chinese communities, prosecutors have long been investigating Chinese organised crime. Beijing’s cooperation has therefore been considered both sensitive and necessary. 

 

 That cooperation has been proceeding cautiously. The first formal response to an Italian letter rogatory, a legal request for judicial assistance from a foreign court, arrived in Prato on May 5. Repubblica revealed a troubling detail within that document: after an attempted murder in the city, Chinese embassy officials had conducted their own parallel investigation. According to the victim and his brother, those officials then reported the suspected instigators directly to Chinese authorities, apparently to prevent them from returning to Italy. Both men made that claim to prosecutors. 

 

 More than one hundred Chinese workers in Italy have now filed complaints with the Prato prosecutor’s office, and some have been begun to cooperate with investigators, suggesting that trust in the Italian judicial process, however fragile, is slowly building.