tagged: Australia, austria, carbon right, cement company Italcementi Group, cyber crime, Czech Republic, emissions trading, Europol, Greece, Greek, Greek Police, hackers, Halyps, Interpol, Italy, misuse, Romania, Trojan horse, university of Patras

Greek Firm say CO2 emissions permits stolen by hackers

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Economy, Tech

Remember our “Greek Hackers steal emissions rights” story? It seems they weren’t very Greek, in fact it seems they weren’t Greek at all, but a Romania-based criminal ring. I had read on a Greek portal about the ‘Romanian-connection’ but the report wasn’t clear or I was too stupid to understand (and lacked the terminology to translate ther story lol). 

Anyway, my major question was how did they manage to use a University Computer in Patras? Oh easy… By penetrating the server system of the University of Patras, they used it as a Trojan horse , got a  Greek IP and …BANG! They hit a Greek cement company that had an emissions account.

According to a Point Carbon news story:

Some 300,000 EUAs were stolen from a Greek cement firm, taking the total missing to 3.1 million. The emissions permits, worth over €4 million ($5.5 million), were stolen by cyber criminals on 18 January from the Greek emissions registry account of cement maker Halyps, which is part of Italy’s Italcementi Group, the company said on Monday.

“We had about 300,000 permits stolen, but that’s just an initial estimate, the investigation is still ongoing. From what we know so far, we were the only Greek company that had permits stolen,” a company spokeswoman told Reuters.

The theft brings the total number of missing permits to 3.1 million, including 1.3 million stolen from accounts at the Czech registry, 1 million taken from cement maker Holcim’s account at the Romanian registry and 488,000 plucked from a government account at Austria’s registry.

According to Reuters  Halyps spokeswoman did not say exactly when the permits, possibly worth around 4.4 million euros ($5.99 million), were stolen but added that the Greek registry informed the company about “unusually large moves” in its account on Jan. 18.

The total value of the permits reported stolen is estimated by Point Carbon News to be around €45 million, based on current market rates, or around 50 per cent more than an EU commission estimate of €30 million made on 20 January, when it first announced that Greece’s registry was one of those hacked.

Cyber Crime experts from Europol, Interpol and EU member police departments have reportedly traced and identified the culprits, and their arrest will be soon announced. The EU Commission imposed a ban on carbon transfer on January 19, a day after the incident.

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