A Dutch national accused of hacking a logistics firm’s systems to gain access to port infrastructure in the Netherlands and Belgium has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
The 44-year-old individual, who was not named, was arrested after the authorities intercepted communications on the end-to-end encrypted phone network Sky ECC, which was shut down by law enforcement in 2021.
The service was almost exclusively used by large-scale criminals and had thousands of users, authorities said at the time. The CEO of Canada-based Sky Global, which owned Sky ECC, was indicted in the US only days after the network was taken down.
Other incriminating conversations were extracted from EncroChat, another encrypted network used by criminals. Authorities cracked the service in 2020, and 6,558 suspects were arrested by 2023.
The port hacker was arrested in 2021 and convicted in 2022, but he appealed the sentence, arguing that the incriminating messages should not be accepted as evidence. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal rejected the defense.
The defendant was sentenced for conspiring with others to deploy remote access malware that would provide them with access to port systems in an effort to hide drug shipments.
According to evidence presented in court, the malware was deployed via a USB stick, with the help of an employee of the hacked port logistics company.
The malware allowed the defendant and his co-conspirators to steal data from the infected systems and to intercept data in transit.
Documents presented in court show that the intrusions occurred between September 2020 and April 2021, and affected the ports of Rotterdam, Barendrecht, and Antwerp.
The hacking enabled 210 kilograms of cocaine to be smuggled into the Netherlands, hidden on a ship carrying wine.
Court documents also showed that the defendant, who has a record of prior computer-related crimes, attempted to resell malware and to extort at least one victim.
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