Hacked cameras, spy on the lives of hundreds of citizens

They spied on the intimate lives of hundreds of private citizens, including children, by hacking the video surveillance systems installed in their homes, in the changing rooms of swimming pools and gyms or in doctors’ offices. Then they sold the access keys to the images for a few tens of euros, allowing thousands of users to spy on people and their lives. There are 11 people investigated throughout Italy by the postal police, members of two different criminal groups. The accusation is of criminal association and unauthorized access to the computer system and for now no child pornography has been carried out. But the investigations, which lasted over a year and ended with ten searches carried out throughout the national territory, are also proceeding in that direction. Investigators from the Milan Postal Police and the Rome Postal and Communications Police Service, coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, discovered the network after reporting a citizen and the arrest of a man accused of child pornography in the context of collaboration with the New Zealand police. The suspects, ten Italians and one Ukrainian citizen, with no specific precedents and aged between 20 and 56, all had high computer skills. In the two groups, for one of which a criminal association is configured, each suspect had defined roles: some searched for video surveillance systems connected to the internet and, once identified, attacked them, in some cases managing to discover the passwords of the digital video recorders. Others, on the other hand, evaluated the framed environments and the quality of the footage, to select the cameras aimed at particularly intimate places, such as bathrooms and bedrooms, to spy on victims during sexual intercourse or acts of self-eroticism. through online ‘showcases’ created ad hoc, on Telegram and Vkontakte, the so-called Russian version of Facebook, they put them up for sale on the network. With only 20 euros, users could access the images and, with the addition of another 20 euros, they could become ‘VIP’ customers, with access to live footage from some selected cameras. The open chats had over 10 thousand users and the premium ones about 2 thousand. The deputy prosecutor of Milan, Eugenio Fusco, spoke at a press conference about a “particularly widespread phenomenon that is emerging. On the one hand there is the ability to find these images and on the other a market that is attentive and ready to receive and pay” . The two groups, active for almost three years, “have created a business on the morbidity of people for stolen images of private life”. The money raised, over 50 thousand euros in cryptocurrencies in the case of one of the two groups, was reinvested in the purchase of increasingly updated software to carry out cyber attacks. Private cameras were often used as babymonitors, aimed by parents in their children’s rooms to monitor them. , but also used by hackers to spy on them. “Viewing and holding images of children is a very serious crime and leads to child pornography”, explained the deputy prosecutor of Milan Letizia Mannella. “Anyone who has even superficially viewed or detained them will incur serious penalties”. The agents confiscated ten smartphones, three workstations, five laptops, 12 hard drives and various cloud spaces, for a total storage capacity of over 50 Terabytes. In addition, all the social accounts used by the suspects for the perpetration of criminal conduct and several thousand euros were seized, including in cryptocurrency.