A criminal group has been discovered to be hijacking web servers in order to distribute child pornography, according to an investigation conducted by the Italian Postal and Communications Police and Europol, the European Police Office.Europol said on Friday that its joint investigation has, since early 2009, resulted in the cleaning of more than 1,000 web servers worldwide in conjunction with the servers' owner. "The complex investigation is still ongoing, to identify the producers and connected criminals," Europol said.
According to the police agency, Italian police was first alerted to the criminal activity in early 2009 when a grandmother, who was surfing the internet to buy gifts for her grandchildren, clicked on a link to an online shop which redirected her to a website showing child pornography.
"She immediately informed the police who, in early 2009, began routinely monitoring the activities of the illicit web pages which seemed to be hosted on an Italian web server," Europol said. "Following further analysis, it was discovered that the website server in question, as well as a number of others worldwide, had been deliberately infected with malware."
The European police agency said this software was being used to hijack the web servers involved and automatically redirect innocent visitors to other websites which were hosting child pornography.
The Italian Police provided intelligence on the infected websites identified and this was disseminated by Europol to all EU law enforcement agencies, plus countries and agencies with which Europol cooperates. Further investigations, conducted at national and international level, showed that the legitimate owners of the affected web servers were unaware of the problem and were not actively involved in the criminal activity. "Studies confirmed that their servers became infected due to a lack of internet security," Europol added.
The criminal group responsible for the malware, apparently originating from Eastern Europe, had associates throughout the world. It is thought that they produced their own child abuse material which was then commercially distributed through secure and anonymous websites. The Italian Postal and Communications Police, working with Europol, developed strategies to follow the money trail and discover the customers and end users of the illegal material.
Europol did not say how many people had been arrested as a result of the international investigation.
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