According to a report by the Observer, the Vatican's digital library, which houses rare manuscripts, such as the oldest edition of the Bible, has been targeted by hackers.
According to Manlio Miceli, head of the intelligence service, the Vatican has been receiving around 100 attacks a month since it decided to digitize its book collection in 2012.
The Vatican Apostolic Library, founded in 1451, contains some 80,000 historical documents, including the oldest extant copy of the Bible, known as the Codex Vaticanus. Its manuscript dates back to around the 4th century and has been in the Vatican collection since at least the 15th century. Other priceless treasures include Sandro Botticelli's 1450 depiction of the Divine Comedy and Henry VIII of England's request for a marriage annulment.
So far, about 25 percent of the library's 41 million pages have been digitized, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by cybercriminals . A successful attack could result in a collection being stolen, manipulated or deleted entirely, Miceli says.
To prevent this, the library has enlisted the services of Darktrace, an artificial intelligence technology company specializing in cyber protection. The organization was founded in 2013 and is backed by former heads of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the UK's domestic security agency, MI5.
While Darktrace 's chief technology officer , Dave Palmer , says that the motivations for cyberattacks can be "to make a quick buck or to cause embarrassment on the world stage," it's arguably the threat of manipulation that presents the biggest security concern . As Miceli says, while physical damage from an attacker is easy to detect, changing the information within the file is harder to detect.
“We must protect our online collection so that readers can be sure that the records are accurate and do not alter history,” Miceli told the Observer. “In the age of fake news, these collections play an important role in combating disinformation and therefore defending them from attacks is crucial.” The Vatican press office has not yet commented.
