Specially Trained Researchers to Intensify Hunt for Cyber Criminals

Speaking at the RSA Security Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center (USA), Director of Malicious Threat Research at SecureWorks, Joe Stewart stated that to put a long lasting impact on the cybercrime, law enforcement authorities and security experts should focus increasingly on the masterminds of the botnets, as reported by SecurityFocus on April 21, 2009.

Stewart believes that the only and effective way to deal cybercrime is to do constant efforts to destruct the operations of cyber criminals and to stop them from making illegal profits.

Further, to beat these crooks, Stewart emphasizes on the need for the security experts to shift their focus from the attacks, such as Storms, Code Reds and Storms, to the masterminds of these attacks.

He also suggested that security researchers should be crafted in such a way to track and destruct particular criminal groups or botnets. These researchers, constituted like major crime units of the police department or a special operations team of military, would do a detailed assessment and would try to spot their target. This trained team of researchers may perhaps infiltrate the criminal group behind the botnet, employing a wide range of disruptive strategies.

The security expert illustrated that researchers gained some success in November 2008 with the shutdown of McColo Corp., which used to harbor command and control servers for numerous large botnets. Besides, the establishment of Conficker Working Group, an association of organizations and firms which has actively worked to cut off the communication of the worm's makers with infected systems may be a good attempt.

According to security experts, to put a significant impact a botnet and the criminal gang behind it, independent and small teams of researchers should focus entirely on that one family of malware. Stewart, commenting in this context, said that these independent teams would focus on a single botnet or criminal gang for a longer term and would try out every possible strategy to put it to an end, as reported by ITWorld on April 21, 2009.

Finally, the expert said that all these efforts could not stop the criminal outfits by their own. However, simultaneous and focused efforts at all fronts, over a longer period of time, can give us the desired results.

Related article: SophosLabs Discovers phishing Scam Against ANZ Bank

» SPAMfighter News - 4/24/2009