Italian banks are not “victim” of phishing money laundering-side

On Oct. 10,02008 the Criminal Court of Milan issued an Order related to the criminal trial Docket Number 24919/05 RGNR stating that a bank whose customers were “affected” by successful phishing attacks, can seek for damages only against the phisher itself, while no civil action can be started against those who laundered the monies coming from the theft.

The people accused of money launderers, said the Court, had no part into the phishing attack, since they play their role only after the monies are stolen.

Another website preemptive seizure

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.

A 40.000 Euros tax to get your data back (or, computer forensics’ hidden cost)

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…

More on the Iphone unlock legal issues…

In its final judgment n. 33768 released on Sept. 3, 2007, the Corte di cassazione (Italian Supreme Court) Sezion III penale, seems to have overruled the previous decision by Bolzano’s Lower Court asserting the right of a consumer to hack a Sony Playstation. If confirmed – the decision text is still not available – this might negatively affect the conclusion I’ve drafted in my previous post about the Iphone unlock legal issue.