International Cooperation Can Combat Global Internet Crime

Global co-operation amongst law-enforcement agencies is the key to combating cyber crime, said an experts' panel at a gathering sponsored by Kaspersky Lab in New York on February 1, 2007, reports SCMagazine.

Miscreants who indulge in criminal activities on the World Wide Web like extortion, phishing and identity fraud now use win-over tactics of high-reward, low-risk pranks, according to James Andrew Lewis, the director & senior fellow of Center for Strategic & International Studies. Lewis, at 'Surviving Cyber Crime: What Lies Ahead' event said online criminals play low-risk crimes with less chances of being caught. Such is the fresh gamut of opportunities for criminals.

Elucidating the factors that help cyber criminals to get away unblemished, Lewis said the anonymity that Internet lends is further added with victims' non-reporting of attacks, the prevalence of remote attacks and the problems in investigating crimes across geographical boundaries are all responsible for non identification of most individuals creating damage on the Internet.

Eugene Kaspersky, Kaspersky Lab's co-founder & head of anti virus research of the company said that nearly 100 people were held for committing cyber crimes in 2006 compared to a large number of 400 previous year.

According to Kaspersky, the problem of cyber crime is partly due to the international nature of the Internet, which helps a malware developer in one country to sell his product to a person in a different country who may use it in yet another country. Here the police often lack the international coordination to pick out the individuals in the chain.

Regretting that there is hardly any solution Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of the company said that they thought anti-virus would do the job but that has failed as an adequate protection. The software created to block malware could be effective but it cannot arrest all attacks.

Eileen Harrington, deputy director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection believes the government alone can't solve the problem, especially since law enforcement agencies around the world differ in their cultures. The private sector can play a big role as vendors develop technology and conduct research to stop crime.

Related article: Internet Threat Volumes Overwhelm Security Companies

» SPAMfighter News - 2/5/2007