Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Saturday that cybercriminals have been spreading his personal data on the dark web for days and seeking further information about him and his family, exposing them to what he called new threats and intimidation.
Tajani, who is also a deputy prime minister, announced the leak in a post on social media. He did not say what kind of information had been shared, but said the cyber threat was ongoing and that those behind it were willing to pay for further details about him and his loved ones.
“I will not allow myself to be intimidated in any way,” he said. He linked the targeting to Italy’s position on Ukraine, saying he was being singled out for “defending the freedom of a sovereign state, taking a clear stand in favour of democracy and the independence of a nation”.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blamed pro-Russian hackers for the leak. That attribution has not been independently verified. The pro-Russian hacker group Noname057(16) has separately stepped up attacks on Tajani on its Telegram channel, according to Decode39, and has claimed responsibility for cyberattacks on Italian diplomatic and Olympic-related infrastructure.
The leak follows a string of hoax bomb threats across Europe that caused flight diversions and security alerts at broadcasters, as well as recent attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems and drone incursions.
On the same day, Tajani inaugurated a new operations room for the Foreign Ministry’s computer security incident response team, known as CSIRT, to monitor and respond to cyber incidents around the clock. Since 1 January, the ministry’s cyber room has handled more than 150,000 hostile events, including around 30 distributed denial-of-service attacks. Tajani said an attack last week on the websites of around 120 offices, including the embassy in Washington, was neutralised without disruption.
Tajani said that on 1 January he established a cyber directorate at the ministry to protect it against intrusions by individuals often linked to state entities hostile to Italy.
Sources: The Associated Press (https://accessnorthga.com/ap_article/italys-foreign-minister-says-cybercriminals-spread-his-personal-data-on-the-dark-web); LaPresse (https://lapresse.us/politics/2026/11/07/security-tajani-my-data-are-on-the-dark-web-but-i-will-not-be-intimidated/); Decode39 (https://decode39.com/13438/russian-hackers-target-tajani-as-italys-foreign-ministry-strengthens-its-cybersecurity-core/).
