2010-09-18 06:34:20
by Adrian Addison Adrian Addison Fri Sep 17, 12:06 pm ET
HONG KONG (AFP) A crime epidemic is silently sweeping the globe as criminals
turn our ever-increasing dependence on computers against us, and even the head
of Interpol is not immune.
On Friday 300 of the world's top law enforcement officials concluded the first
ever international police anti-cybercrime conference, facing the stark and
growing threat from an estimated 105-billion-dollar illegal business.
And Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of the international police agency
Interpol, told the cream of law enforcement from 56 countries that his identity
had been "stolen" to create two Facebook profiles.
One of the impersonators used the fake profile to obtain information on
fugitives targeted in a recent Interpol-led operation seeking on-the-run
criminals convicted of serious offences, including rape and murder.
"Cybercrime is emerging as a very concrete threat," he said at the opening
ceremony of the first Interpol Information Security Conference at Hong Kong's
police headquarters on Wednesday.
"Considering the anonymity of cyberspace, it may in fact be one of the most
dangerous criminal threats we will ever face."
And terrorists could also inflict a significant blow with a cyberattack on a
nation's infrastructure, he added.
"Just imagine the dramatic consequences of an attack, let's say, on a country?s
electricity grid or banking system," he said.
"We have been lucky so far that terrorists did not -- at least successfully or
at least of which we are aware -- launch cyberattacks.
"One may wonder if this is a matter of style. Terrorists may prefer the mass
media coverage of destroyed commuter trains, buildings brought down, to the
anonymous collapse of the banking system. But until when?"
The scale of the problem was also highlighted at the Asia launch of a new
report, also in Hong Kong, on Thursday by Internet security firm Symantec.
Almost two thirds of all adult web users globally have fallen victim to some
sort of cybercrime, the 2011 Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact study
says, from spam email scams to having their credit card details stolen.
China had the most cybercrime victims, at 83 percent of web users, followed by
India and Brazil, at 76 percent each, and then the US, at 73 percent.
The study, of over 7,000 Internet users, also found that 80 percent of people
believed the perpetrators would never be brought to justice. Fewer than half
ever bother to report the crime to police.
Stacey Wu, a Symantec senior director, told AFP that just one of the firm's
offices -- in Chengdu, China -- alone detects 100,000 cybercrime threats every
single day.
"It is no longer just high school kids in their bedrooms sending out malicious
emails," she said. "It's organised criminals.
"They carry out silent, hit-and-run attacks that steal relatively small amounts
of 20 dollars or so from 20 or 30 people. Then they move on."
Cybercriminals also trade in data stolen, often unnoticed, from a victim's
computer. Credit card details, for instance, are sold on the black market for
between five and 20 dollars.
"Identity and personal information theft is a big problem," Wu told AFP. "For
example, if the criminal knows a person makes a lot of transactions online, the
value of that person's information can be worth a lot more."
Cybercrime is worth an estimated 105 billion dollars, according to rival
computer security firm McAfee, and US police say cybercriminals can earn around
23,000 dollars a week.
The biggest problem, and the criminal's greatest advantage, is complacency,
says Professor Joseph Kee-Yin Ng, treasurer of the Internet Society Hong Kong.
"It is hugely important for people and companies to protect themselves," he
told AFP. "The criminal is as real as any thief or mugger, you just can't see
them."