Article Details

Court tosses appeal by hacker who opened port to coke smugglers with malware. Dutchman fails to convince judges his trial was unfair because cops read his encrypted chats. A Dutch appeals court has kept a seven-year prison sentence in place for a man who hacked port IT systems with malware-stuffed USB sticks to help cocaine smugglers move containers, brushing off claims that police shouldn't have been reading his encrypted chats. The Dutch national was arrested in 2021 and convicted the following year, but appealed, arguing that cops had no right to read his messages. In a ruling dated January 9, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal upheld the convictions for complicity in computer hacking, complicity in the extended import of cocaine, and attempted extortion after finding the defendant played a central role in breaching port systems and turning digital access into a tool for organized crime. The court heard how the defendant helped orchestrate the intrusion of a port operator's computer systems by having a terminal employee insert a USB stick containing malware into a workstation. That single physical act opened the door to months of remote access. Investigators found a backdoor installed in September 2020 that stayed put into the following year, while chats show the defendant exploring the network and hunting for admin access. Chats on encrypted messaging service SkyECC showed the defendant effectively live-blogging the break-in. He told accomplices "USB is faster," promised to "delete the logs" once he had admin rights, and later moaned that the intrusion detection system was "a pain in the ass." Defense lawyers argued the SkyECC chats should not have made it into the case file, claiming the cross-border cooperation used to obtain them undermined the defendant's right to a fair trial, but the appeal judges said the argument was insufficiently substantiated and rejected it. SkyECC itself was later disrupted by a Europol-backed crackdown in 2021 after investigators in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands targeted criminal use of encrypted communications. Court records also show how the group shifted tactics when password-cracking stalled, with the defendant pitching a hardware keylogger instead. In October 2020 chats, he called it "untraceable," said "antivirus doesn't matter," and sent around a photo of an "AirDrive USB Keylogger – Records all keystrokes," along with instructions on where to plug it in. Judges also, perhaps unsurprisingly, rejected the claim that the hack was lawful because an employee cooperated. They said that the worker was allowed to use the system to do their job, not to open the door for outsiders, and with that help the hackers got eyes on data they had no business seeing. The cyber intrusion wasn't an end in itself. Judges found the hacked access was used to line up a 210 kg cocaine shipment hidden in wine, with fake paperwork, Portbase advice, and careful timing to get a truck in and out. In one exchange, the defendant warned that mishandling the Portbase system would mean "you're in trouble." The court did throw out one major drug charge, acquitting the defendant of involvement in a separate attempted import of 5,000 kilograms of cocaine, finding the file contained insufficient evidence to prove real participation rather than talk after the fact. But the broader verdict stood. Judges shaved the sentence to seven years due to appeal delays, confiscated the hacking kit, and ordered him to pay for the port's cleanup and legal bills.