Italian siblings arrested for cyberattack

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.