The story of a 15-year-old “hacker” who altered oil tanker routes in the Mediterranean for fun

Although maritime transport has lost some importance and weight compared to past centuries, maritime routes for the transport of oil continue to be crucial for world economies, and all those that pass through the Mediterranean Sea are vital to supply many countries with Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

These tankers are valued in millions of eurosso their safety and integrity are of vital importance, so everything that surrounds them or has any implication with them, is millimetrically controlled by the authorities. It was precisely for that reason that The alerts went off in the control centers in Italy, where they detected the alteration of the route plans of several international oil tankers.

As collected from the Corriere di Romagna, These changes in the pre-established routes of the oil tankers represented a quite serious and worrying problem for security. For this reason, an investigation was initiated, whereSecurity officials managed to track the accesses and establish the area from which the author was connecting.

The authorities found that the individual was in the Italian city of Cesena, but the surprise was that the hacker in question sand it was about a 15 year old young man that was altering the routes of oil tankers from the computer in your room. The young man who stood out for his skills with technology and computing had begun, as if it were a game, to access protected websites.

First of all He did it with the website of the Ministry of Education with the intention of falsifying his grades at the Institute and improve in those subjects in which he was doing worse. But then he decided to move on to the portals of the computer programs that govern the routes of oil tankers and transport vesselse that sail through the Mediterranean Sea.

Here, with no other intention than to entertaindedicated himself to altering and changing the pre-established routes of these freighters. Now he has been denounced for his actions, but due to his age the case has been passed to the Bologna Juvenile Court, which will study how to proceed.