Court tosses appeal by hacker who opened port to coke smugglers with malware

A Dutch appeals court upheld convictions and a seven-year sentence for a man who used malware-loaded USB sticks and a hardware keylogger to breach a port operator's systems, maintain a backdoor from September 2020 into 2021, and help coordinate the concealment and movement of a 210 kg cocaine shipment; encrypted SkyECC chats showed live reporting of the intrusion and efforts to obtain admin access, and the court dismissed defenses about employee consent and the legality of cross-border chat collection.