Rai Report’s anchor-man Ranucci attacked by hackers

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Company and mobile phone e-mails hacked and personal data acquired. Investigations are on-going. Concern for legal data and journalistic investigations.

The journalist Sigfrido Ranucci, presenter of the investigative television programme, Rai Report, of the state broadcaster Rai, in recent months has suffered a hacker attack that compromised his corporate emails, mobile phone data, and his bank account about which he was informed by his own bank. The attack appears to have come from an East European country. Sigfrido Ranucci, himself, reported it in various interviews. The news spread on November 15^th when the National Press Federation and Usigrai (the state broadcaster’s union) in a joint note, expressed their solidarity.

“They hacked into my company accounts, cell phone, email, personal data, address, and I was told that they had operated from an East European country,” he told the newspaper La Repubblica on the 16^th November 2019, claiming he felt “free but also a bit fragile”.

The attack occurred just as Rai Report broadcast its investigation into the Moscopoli affair, i.e., the judicial inquiry involving Gianluca Savoini, the former spokesman for the Lega party leader Matteo Salvini, accused of having negotiated with Russian emissaries an illicit multi-million euro finance for the Lega party through an oil trade. Rai Report also carried out an investigation on the spread of fake news on social networks through the use of Russian trolls that would have amplified the political propaganda of right-wing members. Ranucci, to La Repubblica , said he “does not want to think” about the fact that there may be a connection between the programme’s reporting and the hacking he suffered, “even if – he specified – it is difficult to believe in coincidences”.

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