Feds Renew Cybercrime Fight
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Attorney General Gonzales assures tech execs of the government's commitment.
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Governments and private sector officials from around the world sought ways Thursday to jointly combat cybercrime, whose growth mirrors the phenomenal rise of the Internet&#39;s popularity.
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In an attempt to stem the growing tide of online scams, identity theft and the proliferation of junk e-mail, the Justice Department and state law enforcement officials have initiated what
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The government calls it &quot;Operation Web Snare&quot;, catching criminals who do business online. They&#39;ve been working since June and today announced dozens of arrests for crimes that cost victims millions of dollars.
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More than 100 people have been arrested following the US law enforcement agencies&#39; latest offensive against Internet related crime.
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The FBI is stepping up its fight against hijacked home computers known as zombies or bots.
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Cyber scams are increasingly being   committed by organized crime syndicates out to profit from   sophisticated ruses rather than hackers keen to make an online   name for themselves, according to a top U.S. official.
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The global nature of the Internet is posing new challenges to law enforcement agencies like the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. In response, the FBI is reaching out to new partners, both in the private sector and in the international community, to help fight online identity thieves, computer hijackers, and other digital desperadoes known as &quot;botherders.&quot; The ongoing effort has been dubbed &quot;Operation Bot Roast.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Criminals working with computer hackersÂ pose a rising threat to businesses and governments as those entities increase their dependence on IT systems, a top U.S. federal prosecutor said Thursday. "There's always this worry, and I think a legitimate worry, that terrorists will actually launch computer attacks on critical infrastructure," said Christopher Painter, principal deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. Painter, who prosecuted famed hacker Kevin Mitnick before he signed a plea agreement, cited a case where a hacker in Australia fouled a fresh water supply in 2000 by hacking into a wireless connection and releasing tons of sewage. In the U.S. in 1997, a juvenile hacked into a computer phone and data system and turned off the runway lights at an airport in Worcester, Massachusetts, Painter said. "That obviously could have had pretty dire consequences," Painter said, who spoke about cybercrime at the Information Security Systems Association conference in London. Authorities have seen an increase in cases where hackers steal corporate data and then attempt to blackmail companies, Painter said. Others steal data and sell it to other criminals. In October 2004, the U.S. Secret Service busted the "Shadowcrew," a criminal group that stole credit card data and then sold it on a Web site, Painter said. The problem for law enforcement is that the bad guys are showing increased technical sophistication and often commit cybercrimes across borders, Painter said. But countries are coordinating more on investigations and takedowns, Painter said. Forty-five countries have joined the G8 24/7 High Tech Crime Network, a group of contacts that can offer immediate assistance to other countries on terrorist or criminal cases involving electronic evidence, Painter said. Painter cited a success this week whereÂ Moroccan authorities sentenced two people to prison for the Zotob and Mytob worms, which downed computers worldwide in August 2005. The U.S., Turkey, Morocco and Microsoft Corp. aided in that investigation, he said. But a difficulty with international investigations are countries with weak or no laws against computer crime, Painter said. "Any country that doesn't have good laws is going to be a weak link," he said. Â
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Computer-security experts, including former government officials, urged the George W. Bush administration on Tuesday to devote more effort to strengthening defenses against viruses, hackers and other online threats.
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Hacking contest renews the debate over 'responsible disclosure' of system holes.
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The cases, involving credit card fraud, corporate espionage and other offenses, are part of what the Justice Department calls Operation Web Snare.
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The Department of Justice and the yesterday FBI said ongoing investigations have identified more than 1 million botnet crime victims.
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U.S. Internet users should expect a growing number of prosecutions for sending spam and related activities, such as creating botnets, officials with two U.S. law enforcement organizations said Thursday.
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Several major industry players and law enforcement agencies are collaborating in a new effort to respond to the rapidly growing phishing problem.
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Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 12  /PRNewswire/ -- The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) today announces a new "Take a Bite Out of Cyber Crime" public awareness campaign ( http://www.bytecrime.org/ ) funded by a coalition of private sector partners.