During the third global cyber crime conference jointly organized by Europol and INTERPOL, discussions included threat assessments, cooperation models, legal and practical challenges, training and capacity building initiatives and a strong focus on operational results and lessons learned.
The conference, hosted by Europol’s European Cybercrime Center, was attended by over 350 cyber specialists from around the world. Discussions at the event gave rise to start a number of joint activities driven by INTERPOL and Europol with an open invitation for partners to join.
These include establishment of a Joint Cybercrime Cooperation and Compatibility Taskforce between Europol, INTERPOL and all interested law enforcement partners from around the world which will look into the development of a compatibility chart; helping harmonize various legal systems and handling codes for information in order to create optimal conditions for operational cooperation; and the development of a partnership against abuse of virtual currencies for criminal transactions and money laundering.
The 2015 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) was published on October 1, showing trends in cyber crime and encryption technologies. The annual presentation of the cyber crime threat landscape by Europol’s European Cybercrime Center, covers the key developments, changes and emerging threats in the field of cyber crime for the past twelve months.
IOCTA offers a view predominantly from a law enforcement perspective, highlighting a number of operational successes, and is based on contributions by EU Member States and the expert input of Europol staff, which has been further enhanced and combined with input from private industry, the financial sector and academia.
The assessment stated cyber crime is becoming more aggressive and confrontational, suggesting changes in the profile of cyber crime offenders and increasing the psychological impact on victims.
Malware, particularly ransomware, remains a key threat for private citizens and businesses both in terms of quantity and impact. The assessment finds that a lack of digital hygiene and security awareness contributes to the long lifecycle of exploit kits using well-known attack vectors but also provides new attack vectors as the number of devices in the Internet of Things grows.
Growing Internet coverage in developing countries and the development of pay-as-you-go streaming solutions providing a high degree of anonymity to the viewer, are furthering the trend in the commercial live streaming of child sexual abuse.
Worryingly, the use of anonymization and encryption technologies is widening. Attackers and abusers use these to protect their identities, communications, data and payment methods.
The report identified a number of key recommendations such as a special focus on cross cutting crime enablers such as bulletproof hosting and laundering services. In addition, it called for adequate resources to be given to prevention strategies to raise awareness of cyber crime and increase standards in online safety and information security.
In collaboration with the private sector and academia, Europol says law enforcement needs to explore investigative and research opportunities related to emerging technologies such as decentralized marketplaces, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
The 2016 INTERPOL-Europol Cybercrime Conference will be held at the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore. The focus of that event will be on new lawful avenues to conduct investigations against cyber crime and criminal trade on the Darknet with particular emphasis on the attribution of crimes.
