Even the underworld has its internet economy – The Time

Technology not only makes your life easier, also that of criminals. A new report from Europol offers a worrisome anthology.

Pay to do it with the smartphone, a movie we choose in the cloud and catch up with the friends we do through Facebook or WhatsApp. Nothing but advantages in the digital world. But there is a downside. Criminals use the same technology for faster, more efficient and cheaper to operate. In his report, ” the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment', the European police office Europol, the trends in card.

Social engineering

The human factor remains the weakest link in the protection against cyber criminals. With social engineering, the online manipulation of victims, criminals useful abuse of the human psychology.

Several European countries report a significant increase of CEO fraud. Senior managers in a company to get an email or a chat message that seems to come from their CEO (or the CEO of a friends company). In the message, for example, asked to quickly make a payment to perform or confidential information. The hackers are preparing for by information search about the company and its strategy, and by the typical 'managementspeak'. Such fraud caused each year miljardenverliezen, says Europol.

Not only ceos, are the victim of manipulation. Authors of child pornography try online to win the confidence of their victims, to sexual photos or videos in your hands. Once that is successful, threaten them the images to spread, and blackmail them as the victim to be even more material in your hands. It explains why more and more child pornography consists of images that the victims themselves have taken. The growing phenomenon of sexting in which teenagers sexually suggestive images via chatapps – there is also not alien to it.

Live child abuse

The distribution and consumption of child pornography (or other illicit content) is due to streaming a lot easier. Europol suspects that video-on-demand co-responsible for increasing online offer of child pornography. Also disturbing is the growing practice of live streaming of child abuse, where a provider and a customer in advance on a time for the broadcast to agree. Because the images will be broadcast live, it is very difficult for them to detect and block.

Anonymous and secure

Perhaps the biggest frustration of the police and the judiciary: the internet offers more than ever the possibilities for obscure things in total anonymity to act. To communicate with each other using terrorists and gangsters encrypted chat services. Their were offer them on forums and websites on the darknet, the underground internet that you completely anonymous can explore with special browsers such as Tor. You can pay with a range of so-called cryptomunten such as bitcoin.

There is the fact that the trade in criminal services more and more standardized and automated. Just like with Amazon online storage space, can buy, you can via underground cloud services computing power to buy, for example, on a large scale, a server, and a site plat, or a programmer to hire to be malicious software – malware – on size to develop.

Mobile crime

The time that tablets and smartphones are still not established to the attention of the criminals to pull over. In 14 countries, all studies of malware on smartphones. It can go to ransomware, that the phone locks up until you ransom have been paid, or spyware to enter your bank account details to scam.

Also contactless payments with the smartphone threat of new fraud risk with. There are already known cases of mobile payments that were linked to stolen kredietkaartdata.