Category: Computer Crimes

On Oct. 10 the Justice for preemptive investigation of the Court of Milan issued a decree of preemptive seizure against a couple of websites charged of trading cigarettes. [ 1. That in Italy is a State monopoly activity, thus forbidden to everybody but those that applied for a special license]

This decree is a replica – but a smarter one – of the decree issued (and ovverruled) by the Justice of preemptive investigation of the Court of Bergamo, in the notorious Piratebay case. No clear order of DNS hijacking has been issued, but fact is that ISP’s have to “obscure” a network resource that is far too away from their reach. Thus, if they cannot remove the “charged” files, the only alternative is… yes, you’re right: DNS hijacking.

Q.E.F.

In Italy, whenever you ask for an official copy of a trial-related document you must pay a specific tax established by a Presidential Decree (Testo Unico sulle Spese di Giustizia).

So – as happened today during a computer forensics phase of a criminal trial – a client had to withdraw the request of getting a 120Gb hard disk copy, because the final tax amount would have been about 40.000 Euros. The Testo Unico, in fact, set a rate of 258 Euros-per-CD.

Thus, if you do the math…