Unprepared Law Enforcement & Economic Recession Encouraging Cyber Criminals

According to a new report, "Virtual Criminology Report - Cyber-Crime vs. CyberLaw" from security company McAfee, cyber criminals around the world are reaping benefits from ineffective law enforcement as well as an increasing economic recession leading to nervous people becoming more vulnerable to internet scams.

McAfee reported that there has been a four fold increase in the total number of hacked computers used for pushing out spam as well as facilitating a series of cyber scams in Q4 2008 alone. Thus, armies of "zombies" have been created that flood the net with over 100 Billion spam mails every day.

Moreover, in a growing number of instances, these malicious communications are taking advantage of people's concerns over the battered economy, attracting recipients with unbelievably good job offers in a bid to record their personal details in the cyber criminals' operations, said McAfee.

However, Brazilian Lawyer Paulo Lima, a specialist in PC-related crime, said that there are hardly few instances where cyber crooks were quickly arrested, but these crooks are usually behind the small-scale attacks, as reported by pcworld on December 9, 2008.

Further, according to Lima, those behind the big size operations always escape. The government sector has mostly acted ineffectively, cracking down on the symptoms rather than the illness using an obsolete system along with a wholly unequipped law enforcement unit.

Security experts said that cyber crime in India has become an immense problem in 2008. Unfortunately, judges and politicians don't know the method(s) for tackling it, and police are hesitant to register complaints because they turn out to be too hard to prosecute.

Furthermore, China, Moldova and Russia are commonly blamed as the global sources for internet crime. Giving more details on this issue, McAfee is trying to locate places around the globe where cyber crime prosecution is understood to be particularly sloppy. Additionally, governments have still not given enough priority to fight the menace of cyber crime.

Also, law enforcement agencies are frequently confined to operating within national boundaries and rely immensely on the Interpol to catch criminals. Finally, an absence of coordinated effort among nations is creating hurdles in catching the kingpins of cyber crime, the report cautioned.

Related article: University Reports Increase in Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 12/17/2008