Europe Battles Insiders-Turned-Hackers

LAS VEGAS -- The security adviser for the European Electronic Crimes Task Force in Milan, Italy, warned this week that Europe is dealing with a growing problem that has already had ramifications for governments and businesses around the world: insiders who become hackers for profit.

"The 'gray hat' phenomenon is growing in Europe," said Dario Forte, referring to people employed as security consultants who also engage in criminal computer hacking. "Companies should increase screening and control of IT personnel. And customers should think twice before leaving their IT systems in the hands of contractors."

Forte, who prior to joining the EECTF was the director of the Italian financial police, spoke at the Black Hat security conference here.

Hackers by Night

Forte outlined a recent investigation into an Italian hacker group known as the Reservoir Dogs. Of the 14 members arrested last August by the Italian financial police in what became known as Operation Rootkit, 10 were employed as security experts and 4 were minors. The group was responsible for a series of hacking incidents that spanned the globe and included the likes of NASA, the U.S. Army and Navy, and various financial companies in the United States and abroad.

"Some were working as information security managers in big consulting firms and Internet service providers, even Italian branches of U.S. companies," said Forte. "They were white hats by day and black hats by night."

Because the case is still open, Dario couldn't name the companies involved. However, he did say that Operation Rootkit involved investigations into more than 1000 compromised systems in the United States and Europe, including 100 U.S. military and government systems. Law enforcement officials from the United States and Europe seized more than 40 computers belonging to the hackers, as well as nearly a terabyte worth of evidence that included hundreds of stolen credit card numbers.

Mafia Methods?

The Reservoir Dogs, led by a hacker known as Pentoz, employed internal communications methods similar to those used by organized crime rings, such as encrypted Internet Relay Chat sessions and secure shell and IPv6 tunnels, said Forte. In addition, "they used compromised machines for one single criminal act and then they burned it [clean of evidence]," he said.

In addition to using a compromised University of Pennsylvania system to launch attacks, the group also took control of a corporate Web server in Germany and used it to attack U.S. Army systems. Working with the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, Forte was able to trace many of the attacks back to a flat-rate dial-up service in Italy that was used by members of the group.

"Without international cooperation, it wouldn't have been possible to achieve a good correlation of events," said Forte.

In a more recent case dubbed the Cyprus Credit Card Case, Forte was notified that the leader of a worldwide credit card trafficking ring had been arrested in Cyprus. The EECTF was able to arrange for the travel of both the evidence and police officers involved in the case to its forensic lab in Italy. Once in Italy, the EECTF was able to conduct a forensic examination that recovered enough evidence to keep the defendants in jail until a more complete investigation could be completed in the United States.