Massive Cyber Espionage Operation Uncovered in Italy

They spied on PCs, emails, and attempted to gather news and sensitive data from institutional sites as well. For this reason, Giulio and Francesca Maria Occhionero were sentenced today to respectively 5 and 4 years by the single judge of Rome on the charge of unauthorized access to a computer system. Thus, the accusatory structure of the Rome Prosecutor's Office, which had requested and obtained immediate trial for the two, held up at first instance. The two are accused of a colossal cyber espionage operation against high-ranking state officials, politicians, industrialists, and companies. For the prosecutor Eugenio Albamonte, holder of the file, the siblings attempted to also violate the emails of the former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the President of the ECB Mario Draghi, and the former Prime Minister Mario Monti. "This is not right at all," shouted the mother of the two siblings, born and raised in Rome after the reading of the sentence. Judge Antonella Bencivinni ordered as additional penalties the perpetual disqualification from public offices for the nuclear engineer and a disqualification of 5 years for the sister. A provisional immediately enforceable in favor of Enav (5 thousand euros), Lazio Region (500 euros), Viminale (2 thousand euros), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (8 thousand) and Ministry of Economy and Finance (25 thousand euros) was also decided. For the two defendants, the Prosecutor's Office had urged sentences of 9 years for Giulio and 7 years for the sister. During the closing arguments, the prosecutor had argued that the Occhioneros "managed a massive espionage activity with the creation of a real network aimed at infecting about 18 thousand PCs in order to gather sensitive data without the computer owner's knowledge." According to the prosecution, the nuclear engineer is "responsible for having conceived, planned, and fueled a system for the acquisition" of a huge number of data. Today's sentence does not close the judicial case of the two siblings. In the coming months, in fact, the prosecution could close the second line of investigation in which a supposed political espionage activity carried out by the Occhioneros is hypothesized. This new front has led to the identification of at least six thousand people spied on by the two since 2004 with over three and a half million emails snatched by the malware used by the nuclear engineer. The figures of the 'exfiltrated' emails and the 'monitored' subjects, which represent the core of the split-off investigation, were also obtained thanks to the collaboration of the FBI, which assisted the postal police in 'unlocking' the American servers of the two suspects.