Baby hacker (15) improves his school grades and then sends oil tanker on a new course

Cesena (Italy) - A 15-year-old schoolboy from Italy has hacked a navigation platform for merchant ships as a joke. The baby hacker unceremoniously sent several oil tankers on a new course.

Initially, the 15-year-old "only" wanted to improve his grades and hacked into his school's computer system - with success.

But that was apparently not enough for the baby hacker, reports the newspaper Corriere Romagna. The teenager, who attends a school with a technical profile, had bigger plans.

He managed to hack into a computer platform for merchant ships. On a whim, he sent several oil tankers on a new course in the Mediterranean.

Of course, this did not go unnoticed for long.

IT experts were able to identify the 15-year-old and trace the attack back to his childhood bedroom in Cesena (Emilia-Romagna region), reports the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The parents are said to have known nothing of all this. His computer was confiscated by the police.

It also came to light that the pupil had also been boosting the grades of his friends, thus saving them the trouble of extra tuition. He is said to have hacked into the Ministry of Education's system to do this.

The incident is extremely embarrassing for the Italian authorities. They have to ask themselves why critical infrastructure is apparently anything but secure. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education emphasizes that the student had no access to internal information systems. It was only the school's system that was involved.

The juvenile court in Bologna is now dealing with the young hacker.

Back in 2018, a then 11-year-old managed to hack into a government server at an IT security conference in the USA and change election results.