http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9008638&intsrc=hm_list
When pen testers go bad
Heads of security accused of corporate espionage January 19, 2007 (IDG
News Service) -- Milan magistrates have arrested four Telecom Italia SpA
employees for alleged illegal espionage activities, bringing a fresh
wave of scandal crashing down onto the former national carrier.
The suspects were identified as Fabio Ghioni, the head of information
security at Telecom Italia, his assistant Rocco Lucia and Guglielmo
Sasinini, a former journalist who had been hired by the company to
conduct country risk analyses for the Middle East region, according to a
230-page arrest warrant signed by Judge Giuseppe Gennari and widely
cited in newspaper reports Friday.
A fourth warrant was served in prison on Giuliano Tavaroli, the former
head of security at Telecom Italia, who had already been incarcerated on
illegal espionage charges as a result of a separate investigation.
The four men are accused of using Telecom Italia's resources to spy on
Vittorio Colao, the former executive chief executive officer of the
Rizzoli Corriere della Sera (RCS) SpA publishing group and on Massimo
Mucchetti, the deputy director of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, as
part of an elaborate intelligence operation that has all the hallmarks
of a spy thriller, according to wire reports Thursday and newspaper
articles Friday.
Ghioni and his colleagues targeted Mucchetti because of his
well-informed and critical articles about Telecom Italia and its parent
company Pirelli SpA, according to an article in the Corriere della Sera,
which contained excerpts from a book written by Muchetti on the subject.
Ghioni, the head of a 10-member "Tiger Team" set up to run penetration
tests against Telecom Italia's information security system, allegedly
used a Trojan program, Telecom Italia server in Rome, plus computers in
Brazil and Switzerland, to break into Colao's company notebook computer
and steal sensitive data.
Among the documents allegedly stolen was a draft version of the RCS
three-year business plan. Ghioni allegedly exploited the theft by
contacting RCS and warning the company that its security measures were
inadequate. He told company officials the business plan was floating
around on hacker Web sites and offered to take over the RCS security
function himself, newspapers reported Friday.
The modus operandi resembled that of his former boss Tavaroli, who
allegedly rose to the top of Telecom Italia's security department after
engineering the discovery of an electronic bug planted in the Telecom
Italia chief executive officer's car in 2001. The then head of security
at Telecom Italia was fired for the lapse and Tavaroli was able to take
his place.
The suspects allegedly exploited contacts with officers of the French
domestic intelligence service Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire
(DST) to spy on Pirelli Chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera and his family
when they spent time in Paris. They are also accused of spying on
Mucchetti's bank accounts and are even alleged to have hired an
attractive young woman to loiter in a bar near the Corriere della Sera
in the hopes of picking up the newspaper's deputy director.
Though himself a victim of the Tiger Team's espionage, Tronchetti
Provera has also been accused by a collaborating witness of having a
professional interest in some of the intelligence that was allegedly
illegally gathered by Ghioni, Tavaroli and their associates.
Milan prosecutors say the quantity and quality of the information
gathered on behalf of Pirelli/Telecom was completely out of proportion
to the real needs of the group.
Tronchetti Provera issued a statement Thursday saying he had never
authorized the illegal collection of information on anyone and had
"taken absolutely no part in any illegal activity."
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:22 CST