Goodbye ‘pizzo’: crime moves to the metaverse and dark web
The disturbing picture that emerges from the Report 'Cyber organized crime - Mafias in cyberspace'
ROME – Professional hackers on the payroll, radio-controlled submarines and drones to manage drug and weapons trafficking, artificial intelligence. They are the ‘cybermafia’, the new frontier of organized crime which, acting purely on the web, where they have now moved many of their activities, increasingly skilfully ride the wave of technological and IT innovation to expand their range of action and increase profits: hybrid organizations, capable of operating both in the analogue and digital reality, which combine traditional ‘protection money’ with online extortion, focusing on the metaverse and on the dark weband no longer just recruiting lawyers, accountants, brokers, notaries or real estate agents, but above all computer engineers, hackers and drug designers.
THE MAFIAS IN CYBERSPACE
This is the disturbing picture that emerges from the Report ‘Cyber organized crime – Mafias in cyberspace’, presented this morning to the Chamber of Deputies by the Magna Grecia Foundation, which this year it celebrates 40 years since its birth, it was already illustrated last April at the UN in New York. The press conference in Montecitorio was attended by, among others, the president of the Foundation, Nino Foti, the prosecutor of the Republic of Naples, Nicola Gratteri, the editor of the report and expert in mafia-type criminal phenomena, Antonio Nicaso, professor at Queen’s University Canada, and the president of the Anti-Mafia parliamentary commission, Chiara Colosimo.
THE REPORT OF THE MAGNA GRECIA FOUNDATION
The Magna Grecia Foundation report, commented Colosimo as he opened the meeting, “has a double great merit: on the one hand it offers an accurate reconnaissance and analysis of criminal phenomena, on the other it proposes a series of suggestions and indications useful for preventing and repressing cybercrime”. As for countermeasures, he added, “some important steps forward have been made recently. In April 2023, Parliament approved control rules on cryptocurrency transfers to prevent their use in money laundering, terrorist financing and other crimes. The bill on cybersecurity, then, can constitute an effective tool to fight cybercrime in Italy. A priority, especially considering the increase in cyber attacks in crucial sectors such as SMEs, the healthcare and financial system, and the public sector administration”.
GRATTERI: “IN ONLINE BANKS TECHNOLOGIES THAT THE POLICE YOU DREAM”
“I am seeing more interest in the topic from the Anti-Mafia commission than from other institutional bodies where immediate operational and technical decisions could be made”, Gratteri’s words. “I respect President Colosimo because she is doing more than she could or should do, unlike other parts of the institutions,” the prosecutor said. Explaining that “and criminal organizations now consider the ‘old’ protection money as something outdated”, and that mafias now create ad hoc online banks to launder even billions of dollars, > as in a recent case of Camorra. “The thing that surprised us is that in the seized banks we discovered technologies that our judicial police wouldn’t even dream of. Unfortunately, in actions to combat the mafias, Italy has lagged behind countries like Germany , Holland and Belgium who now have to help us. In the police forces there is a total lack of young engineers capable of giving the push our system needs. We are wasting too much time and a lot of field”, concluded Gratteri. Professor Nicaso in fact explained how “that of 2024 is an organized crime that is increasingly penetrated into the heart of technological and IT innovation”.And in this criminal competition, “those who have remained behind in the use of web, as an American thing, risks disappearing”, underlined the expert.
FOTI: “Elaborated INDEX TO DETERMINE THE LEVEL OF COMPUTER RISK”
“After last year’s experience, we felt the need to prepare a second report that examined the hybridization of mafias in the digital world, revealing how they have evolved in recent years. years to exploit the opportunities offered by technology”, explained Foti. Precisely for this reason, the primary objective of authorities and investigators all over the worldmust be to keep up with the times. This is why, the president of the Magna Grecia Foundation further said, “thanks to careful analysis work we have developed an index that allows us to synthetically determine the actual level of risk of institutions and businesses in case of cyber attacks. Having a summary measure like this is essential to guide policy decisions, as it provides a clear and comprehensible picture of the scope and evolution of cyber threats, allowing policy makers to evaluate the socio-economic impact of cybercrime in a given territory and tomake the consequent decisions with a more rational and more effective approach”, commented Foti.