When PenTesters go bad

Milan magistrates have arrested four Telecom Italia SpA employees for alleged illegal espionage activities, bringing a fresh wave of scandal crashing down onto the former national carrier. The suspects were identified as Fabio Ghioni, the head of information security at Telecom Italia, his assistant Rocco Lucia and Guglielmo Sasinini, a former journalist who had been hired by the company to conduct country risk analyses for the Middle East region, according to a 230-page arrest warrant signed by Judge Giuseppe Gennari and widely cited in newspaper reports Friday.

A fourth warrant was served in prison on Giuliano Tavaroli, the former head of security at Telecom Italia, who had already been incarcerated on illegal espionage charges as a result of a separate investigation.

The four men are accused of using Telecom Italia’s resources to spy on Vittorio Colao, the former executive chief executive officer of the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera (RCS) SpA publishing group and on Massimo Mucchetti, the deputy director of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, as part of an elaborate intelligence operation that has all the hallmarks of a spy thriller, according to wire reports Thursday and newspaper articles Friday.

Ghioni and his colleagues targeted Mucchetti because of his well-informed and critical articles about Telecom Italia and its parent company Pirelli SpA, according to an article in the Corriere della Sera, which contained excerpts from a book written by Muchetti on the subject.