From the University of Trento software and a “label” to counter … – Il Sole 24 Ore

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This article was published on Dec. 17, 2015 at 9:32.
The last change is the December 17, 2015 at 10:42.

A pharmacy, if he wants to sell online, you must have seen the blue sticker in the European Union . But a skilled hacker to fake it and copy it to a website of illegal drugs only takes nine minutes.

Against a market – that of counterfeit drugs sold online – it is estimated that only in the EU is worth 10.5 billion euro, and where 94% of the pharmacies in the network is illegal, the University of Trento presents This morning, the results of Fakecare, three-year project culminating in 2015 and funded with over 365 thousand euro from the European Commission to develop software and innovative tools in the fight against counterfeiting online. Because according to the World Health Organization at least 50% of the medicines sold online are counterfeit.

So Fast was born (an acronym for Fakecare Alert System Tool) algorithm detective map, crosses, analyzes the data streams and allows the police and Interpol to check which pharmacy websites They are legal and which are not. Prototype already tested during Operation Pangea conducted a year ago by Interpol and that led to the closure of about 11,800 illegal websites. “By crossing the patterns and recurrent features typical of illegal websites with constantly updated lists of” addresses “online pharmacy no legal – he explained Andrea Di Nicola, who heads the research group eCrime University of Trento – we are able, through the bonds that we have to distinguish which sites that sell drugs do in order and which will not. With precision demonstrated by 95 percent. “

In addition, the interdisciplinary team (composed of lawyers, criminologists, statisticians, computer scientists and engineers) has produced a” digital stamp “to be placed on the websites of pharmacies, which interacts with the user and that guarantees compliance with over 10 security standards, to ensure the authenticity of the website and overcome the weaknesses of the EU logo, falsifiable, experts say Trentino, in nine minutes.

But the enemy, to defeat him, you know. “For this reason – concluded Di Nicola – for 6 months, the team has” mapped “and analyzed the behavior of thousands of potential customers for illegal pharmacies, building 2 fake websites of illegal drugs (which only after finalizing the impedicano ‘purchase. In 6 months we have had over 5 thousand potential customers, which were connected early in the morning or at lunchtime, in order to buy drugs deemed especially “embarrassing” to be requested at the counter, mostly on prescription. “It ranging from products and vasodilators to increase performance products for athletes and for those diets until the abortion.

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