The Belgian port of Antwerp has announced plans to set up a task force to strengthen its cyber security defences, following the revelation that it was the victim of a series of cyber-attacks by hackers working for a drug-smuggling ring. The scale of the operation was brought to light in a recent BBC report, in which Rob Wainwright, the head of European police agency Europol, warned that organised crime had a new business model that meant that cyber-attacks were likely to be increasingly used in the future by drug smugglers. In the Antwerp case, a Dutch drug trafficking ring was reported to have used Belgian hackers to break into the IT systems of at least two companies at the port, enabling the ring to locate containers containing drugs and remove them before they were claimed by their real owners. The drugs - heroin and cocaine - were hidden in containers from South America containing bananas and timber.
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