'Wire' plot comes to life as gang hacks into port database
COLIN FREEMAN LONDON – 17 OCTOBER 2013
Irish Independent
DRUG traffickers have recruited hackers to help them smuggle shipments into ports, according to Europol.
Drug gangs are hacking into computers at European ports to allow them to smuggle in entire container shipments of contraband, Europe's crime fighting agency has disclosed.
Officials at Europol have divulged how a group of traffickers suspected of importing tons of cocaine at a time recruited hackers to breach IT systems at one of Europe's major ports, Antwerp.
It allowed the gang to work out the precise location and security details of containers of bananas and timber that their accomplices in South America had secretly planted drugs in.
The gang then sent in drivers to steal the cargo before the containers' legitimate owners arrived to pick them up.
"We have effectively a service-orientated industry where organised crime groups are paying for specialist hacking skills that they can acquire online," said a Europol official.
The scam has echoes of a plot in the hit US crime thriller 'The Wire', in which a drug gang hire corrupt dockworkers to alter the computer records of containers carrying contraband.
Europol director Rob Wainwright said the case showed the need for police to become "more tech savvy".
