Drug traffickers recruited hackers to breach Port IT Systems

[Mendo_K]

The head of Europe's crime fighting agency has warned of the growing risk of organised crime groups using cyber-attacks to allow them to traffic drugs.

The director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, says the internet is being used to facilitate the international drug trafficking business.

His comments follow a cyber-attack on the Belgian port of Antwerp.

Drug traffickers recruited hackers to breach IT systems that controlled the movement and location of containers.

Police carried out a series of raids in Belgium and Holland earlier this year, seizing computer-hacking equipment as well as large quantities of cocaine and heroin, guns and a suitcase full of cash.

Fifteen people are currently awaiting trial in the two countries.

Mr Wainwright says the alleged plot demonstrates how the internet is being used as a "freelance marketplace" in which drug trafficking groups recruit hackers to help them carry out cyber-attacks "to order".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24539417

 

[neversickanymore]

The line for internet usage licenses start here.. please have your papers out, PAPERS folks PAPERS.. we are now regulating the internet to protect you from yourselves.. subservient thinking and the idea that you people can be responsible for yourselfs is utter hogwash.. we the governments have and have always had your best interests in mind.. we can't have any of this radical thinking or free living.. the idea that you people can make decisions for yourself is silly.. this is earth and we own it and will tell you how to live your lives in the proper way to be correct. PAPERS FOLKS. We can not have the free flow of ideas between people of different nationalities, races, political and religious and views as we use these distinctions combined with fear to manipulate you into doing or will. If you guys are able to figure out that living together with a little bit of acceptance of each others different philosophies and ways of living life and realize that it is not only possible but also wildly promotes higher standards of living, we who control and profit off militaries and jails and the gross inequality in the world will lose our stranglehold.. PAPERS, folks we need to protect you aren't you AFRAID, you need to be afraid of the internet. Papers folks.

 

[RedRum OG]

^lol, nice

i can see it, some sort of misguided attempt to regulate the internet. it would work as well as the war on drugs, the internet is just as huge and as uncontrollable as the black market, and it would fail just as hard

and ive said this before and will say it again, this kind of stuff shouldnt be surprising. did they think traffickers were too stupid to figure out computers?

 

[Mendo_K]

I guess they don't trust the old way of just bribing the port workers. The quantities this operation was moving though 1000kg of cocaine and 1000kg of heroin, plus 1.3m euroes they had dosing about..

In January a lorry driver unconnected to the plot was shot at after he had unwittingly driven a container allegedly filled with cocaine from the terminal at Antwerp.

The attack took place in the province of Limburg, where suspects armed with AK-47 assault rifles fired at the driver, who was unharmed.