No alarms in South Tyrol and Valle d'Aosta, 'different email'

While throughout Italy the bell rang to warn of the alarm and rivers of girls and boys, accompanied by their teachers, left the buildings, in Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta the lessons continued without any interruption. Not a single threat has arrived in the two provinces and in the autonomous region. If one wanted to imagine a map of Italy with a red dot for each evacuated institution, Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta would represent white spots. How was this possible? Because the schools' email addresses have 'independent' domains, which in fact do not end with @editore.it

Philipp Achammer, the councilor for German language education in the Province of Bolzano, illustrates this theory. Bolzano was spared from the cyber attack, as was Trento, due to the autonomous school system which also involves different email addresses. "Our emails do not pass through the ministry's system - he said - Since neither the German nor the Italian language school in Alto Adige have received threatening emails, this should be the reason". "We are following the situation very carefully. We do not underestimate it at all and we will keep the situation under control", adds the counterpart for the Italian language schools in the Province of Bolzano, Marco Galateo. The education councilor of the Province of Trento, Francesca Gerosa, confirms: "Our state of alert today was maximum, I personally remained in continuous contact with our Education Department and with the police commissioner, and I received no reports throughout the day".

In Alto Adige, schools have emails with the domain of the autonomous province, i.e. @provincia.bz.it for the Italian ones and @provinz.bz.it for the German ones. The same system is also applied in nearby Trentino, where the parent who writes to his child's school must type @provincia.tn.it. Even in Aosta you don't type @editore.it, like in the rest of the country, but @mail.scuole.vda.it. In the autonomous region there are a total of 200 schools, which belong to 25 educational institutions. Experts will be the ones to establish the exact flaw that allowed this sensational cyber attack. Trento, Bolzano and Aosta were saved, at least this time.