Milan Police arrest leader of a hacker gang

The State Police arrested the leader of a Romanian hacker gang specialising in ransomware attacks, thanks to a joint operation with France and Romania. The investigation, conducted by the Cybernetics Centre in Milan and coordinated by the Postal Police and Cyber Security Service, led to the identification of several suspects, all of Romanian nationality, in just a few months. The gip of Milan applied pre-trial detention in prison to the main suspect: a 44-year-old man, considered highly dangerous.

The name of the Romanian hacker gang is 'Diskstation' . The investigation was triggered by a series of complaints from several companies in Lombardy, which had suffered the encryption of data in their computer systems, with 'paralysis' of production processes. In order to regain possession of the data and be able to resume operations, the victims had to pay the cyber criminals a hefty ransom in cryptocurrency. The investigations, coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, were developed on a dual investigative front: on the one hand, an in-depth forensic analysis of the computer systems attacked by the hacker group was carried out, and on the other hand, a thorough examination of the blockchain was conducted. The findings, at the end of this first phase of the investigation, have alarmed abroad the range of activities. Under the coordination of Europol (European Union Agency for law enforcement cooperation), a task force was set up with the national police forces of France and Romania also looking for 'Diskstation'.

The victims turned out to be professionals and companies in various fields of graphic production, film production, event organisation and non-profit organisations active internationally in civil rights protection and charitable activities. Searches in June 2024 in Bucharest at the suspects' homes, in which investigators from Milan participated, caught some suspects red-handed. The Milan gip applied pre-trial detention in prison to the main suspect, a 44-year-old Romanian, who is charged with several incidents of abusive access to computer or telematic systems and extortion.