To Catch Crooks In Cyberspace, FBI Goes Global

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116406726611228873-email.html

To Catch Crooks In Cyberspace, FBI Goes Global Agency Works With Police In
Foreign Countries To Track Down Hackers
Zeroing In on the Zotob Worm
By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
November 21, 2006; Page A1

ANKARA, Turkey -- On Aug. 16, 2005, a CNN television news bulletin alerted
viewers that computers at the network's New York and Atlanta offices were
infected with a new virus called Zotob. Soon, U.S. companies from coast to
coast were hit.

Halfway around the world, two young computer hackers in Turkey and Morocco
got spooked by the ensuing media coverage, but mocked the ability of
authorities to track them down. "They can't find me," wrote Atilla Ekici, a
23-year-old Turk, in an email to his accomplice, a 19-year-old Moroccan
called Farid Essebar. "Ha, ha, ha," replied Mr. Essebar.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, was already hot on their
trail. The 98-year-old FBI, which has traditionally focused on domestic
crime, is extending its reach beyond U.S. borders and boosting cooperation
with other law-enforcement agencies in pursuit of cybercriminals, much as
the agency has done in tracking down terrorists overseas.
 
The shift reflects the global nature of computer crimes, which include
unleashing viruses, worms and other rogue programs onto victims' computers
to disrupt them or steal information. As electronic borders between
countries blur, hackers in one nation can easily commit crimes against
individuals, corporations and governments on the other side of the world.

The FBI now ranks cybercrime as its third priority behind terrorism and
espionage. Computer-based crimes caused $14.2 billion in damages to
businesses around the globe in 2005, including the cost of repairing systems
and lost business, estimates Irvine, Calif., research firm Computer
Economics.

Building relationships with police in other countries is "the only way we
are going to effectively get a handle on the problem," says Christopher
Painter, deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Section.

The FBI is running into limits fighting international computer crime.
Cybercrooks remain difficult to pinpoint in part because hackers can hide
their tracks by commandeering computers from afar and routing their
activities through machines dotted around the world.

Even when the agency does find suspects overseas, local authorities
sometimes lack the resources or laws to prosecute. In its pursuit of
LoveBug, one of the first big international computer viruses, which spread
around the world in 2000, the FBI located its creator in the Philippines.
But he was never charged because local laws didn't specify the virus
writer's activities as illegal at the time.

"The criminal community is winning," says Nicholas Ianelli, a security
analyst at the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, a
federally funded group that coordinates responses to computer-security
incidents.

But the agency is making some headway, thanks partly to a diplomatic
offensive to enlist help from foreign agencies. It now has about 150 agents
deployed in some 56 offices around the world, including in Iraq and China,
which deal with computer intrusions, as well as terrorism and other crimes.
That has grown from about a dozen offices in the early 1990s.

...

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.