Extortionists - The White Hats Are Coming !!
Published: Friday, April 08, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
GETTING IT TOGETHER
Extortionists, beware - the white hats are coming after you
Increasing cooperation between global hi-tech crime busters and technology companies resulted this week in a high level conference sponsored by the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.
Security specialists and law enforcement agencies discussed how to tackle the rising tide of computer crime as criminal syndicates across the world increasingly band together in informal alliances to hack into credit card databases, steal on-line banking details and extort businesses by threatening denial of service attacks.
The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit has uncovered networks of criminals using internet relay chat services to co-ordinate attacks on businesses and home banking consumers, said Mick Deats, the unit’s acting head. "It is tough to work out who is in charge and what effect you will have when you deal with them. It is much more difficult to investigate than the traditional organised crime structures," Deats said.
Investigations by the Hi-Tech Crime Unit into Russian groups responsible for denial of service attacks against online betting sites last year have shed new light on the way criminal hacking groups work, and recent high profile busts were studied at the conference. Five people have been arrested so far following collaborative investigations by the Hi-Tech Crime Unit, Russian police, the FBI and private sector security specialists.
The investigations have revealed loose collaborative criminal networks, including groups selling the network services of tens of thousands of hacked PCs, known as bot networks, to other criminal groups to launch denial of service attacks.
"We have learned a great deal from our operations in Russia. We knew there were loose networks, but we did not understand the nature of the groups and how they related," said Deats.
The Hi-Tech Crime Unit, working with overseas law enforcement groups, has infiltrated the groups by tracking their activities on the internet and tracing the movements of laundered funds.
"International cooperation has moved on in leaps and bounds. You have to work really quickly because digital evidence is volatile. You cannot use the normal mutual legal assistance channels," said Deats.
