Italian police have arrested a nuclear engineer, Giulio
Occhionero, 45 and his sister, Francesca Maria Occhionero, 49 for hacking into 18,000
high-profile email accounts, including the former Prime Minister.
Authorities suspect that the siblings may have ties to the
Freemasons, because the malware used in the hack was called “Eye Pyramid,”
believed to be a reference to the all-seeing eye of God, or Eye of Providence,
a symbol typically associated with Freemasonry. The name of the software may
also have been a play on his own surname – Occhionero means “black eye” in
Italian.
The widespread cyber-attack compromised communications of
prominent Italian institutions and individuals, including Vatican’s two former
Prime Ministers, Vatican cardinals, bank executives and other high profile
targets, which prosecutors claim was used to conduct insider trading. Mario
Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank was also among the targeted
individuals. Former Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi was also one who resigned in
December last year after losing a constitutional reform referendum.
The attackers, who have dual residencies in London and Rome,
are accused of spearphishing attacks using malware to gain access to victims'
email accounts and illegally accessing classified information and breaching and
intercepting information technology systems and data communications since 2012.
The siblings were most recently living in Italy.
Vatican officials have not yet commented on the attack and
it is yet unknown to what extent sensitive Vatican information may have been
compromised.
There are indications the malware campaign may have been
running from as early as 2008. In total, just under 1800 passwords were
allegedly captured by the Occhionero siblings, who exfiltrated around 87
gigabytes of data to servers in the United States.
Mr Occhionero who had strong links to the Masonic movement
allegedly developed software that infected email accounts, enabling him to
access the information. Several of the compromised accounts belonged to Mason
members.
Whether or not there are ties to the Masons, cyber security
experts believe it is highly unlikely that the sibling pair acted alone.
The illegally accessed information was stored on servers in
the United States, leading to an ongoing investigation with the assistance of
the FBI’s cyberdivision. The stolen data has been seized by Italian police and
the FBI.
Italian police believe the siblings used the stolen
confidential information to make investments through a firm operated by Mr
Occhionero, a nuclear engineer by profession.