"No sensitive data related to operational activities appears to have been taken," police said in a statement, saying their findings had been passed to judicial authorities.

They did not give a timeframe but the La Repubblica daily had earlier reported that the interior ministry suffered a cyber-attack between 2024 and 2025.

It reported that Chinese hackers had obtained a list of some 5,000 police officers, many in sensitive roles such as counter-terrorism or tracking Chinese dissidents in Italy.

"The malicious activities were promptly detected by the Postal Police as part of routine security monitoring of the interior ministry's IT systems," the police statement said.

Italy's Postal Police handles cyber-crime.

La Repubblica reported that the discovery of the hack damaged the growing cooperation between Italy and China on drugs, cyber-crime, human trafficking and organised crime.

This had included working together to investigate the activities of warring Chinese mafia groups in the textile hub of Prato, near Florence.