2010 Sees Upswing in Arrests, Prosecution of Cyber Criminals
F-Secure yesterday released the first part of its 2010 security review, which notes a significant success in arresting and prosecuting cyber criminals around the world, a development the company hopes will be a permanent move for law enforcement to identify, seize and prosecute cyber criminals.
Before the Internet, drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling were considered international crimes without borders. Although those problems still exist, the element of Internet crime has been added to the list of growing plagues law enforcement agencies now face, said F-Secure Chief Research Officer Mikko Hyppönen.
“There has been a huge explosion of online crime, which is always international, always across the borders,” he said.
Highlighting some of this year’s biggest arrests of cyber criminals from all over the world, Hyppönen and Sean Sullivan, security adviser at F-Secure’s North American Labs, discussed captures ranging from U.S.-based T.J.Maxx hacker Albert Gonzales to the 70-member-strong Romanian phishing gang to hackers in St. Petersburg, Russia, who hacked online-trading accounts.
Another incident involved a Bank of America employee who installed malware on ATMs to make his withdraws “invisible” and was able to steal more than $200,000 from the hacked machines over a seven-month period before getting caught.
Once a pastime activity, malware became a money-making business controlled by criminals around 2003. However, for a long time the transition of malware from an online annoyance to criminal activity was not reflected by the number of arrests and convictions of the perpetrators. In the rare cases of individuals getting arrested and prosecuted, the sentences were not very strict.
However, as evidenced by the major arrests this year, cyber criminals today are getting a different kind of treatment, where no one is turning a blind eye.
“Online crime is no longer a risk-free business,” Hyppönen said. “Crime is crime after all. It was only a matter of time before law enforcement started catching up and we hope that news of arrests and convictions become commonplace.”
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