Inside Job: How a Hacker Helped Cocaine Traffickers Infiltrate Europe’s Biggest Ports

The OCCRP article discusses how criminal groups have found new ways to smuggle drugs into Europe through commercial ports, using digitalization and automation to their advantage. A Dutch hacker named Davy de Valk was hired by drug traffickers to infiltrate the IT systems of major ports in Europe, providing intel on how to move drugs undetected. The initial access vector in Antwerp was a USB stick for a port employee, who was offered 10,000 euros to insert it and infect a computer. Security awareness training has a hard time competing with that. The article provides a detailed chronology of the hack. De Valk was eventually caught and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In March 2023, an Antwerp court sentenced the terminal employee to three years and three criminals behind the hack to up to five years. According to VRT, the hack only partly succeeded, but it still exposed personnel data, terminal plans, and the locations of surveillance cameras along with their footage.