Australia needs better control of cyber criminals
Australia needs better control of cyber criminals
Feb 15, 2005: Organised crime is taking greater control of the Internet all of the time, according to a recent research study, which has revealed that classic crimes, from extortion and protection rackets, to fraud and theft are a big favourite for these criminals.
The study has found that cyber crime has evolved from the days of lone computer hackers in their bedroom targeting individual computers. It has found that there is a 'cyber mafia' out there using thousands of invisible networks to commit crime all over the world.
McAfee funded the survey, which was carried out by independent Internet security expert and computer criminologist Dr. Peter Troxler, which included input from Europe's leading hi-tech crime units in the U.K., France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy.
Allan Bell, the marketing director of McAfee for the Asia Pacific, said that these cyber crimes also included Australia too, and he explained what the problems were and how we needed better control of these problems.
"There's no reason why Australia is less affected by these cyber crimes. The problem is that these attacks cross international borders, so we are victims to attacks from anywhere in the world too. But we are better than most countries at stopping them, because we have sophisticated police procedures in force.
"Our police are very aware of online crimes and keep track of them. But there are problems where other countries do not have laws in place to punish attacks from their own country. For instance, an attack once from The Philippines, but the criminals were not punished because this country did not recognise the cyber crime as being against the law."
He suggests that the only way to win the war against these criminals is through increasing security on the Internet, by blocking out the vulnerabilities, better police collaboration between countries, through police forces working together more tightly to focus on cyber crime, and stiffer punishments for attackers.
In Russia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs counted 7,053 cyber crime cases in 2003, almost double that of 2002 (3,782); last year that number increased dramatically, with 4,995 cases recorded in the first half of the year.
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