Vigilance urged to stop cyber criminals slipping through net

Published on Saturday 4 July 2009 14:41

BUSINESSES and other organisations are unwittingly allowing their brands, products and services to feature prominently on discredited and often illegal websites, a UK cybercrime conference in Edinburgh has been warned.

Microsoft organised the three-day event, staged behind closed doors and attracting blue chip companies such as Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and TNT, together with e-crime specialists from every Scottish police force.

They heard a series of top line speakers collectively advise that extra vigilance is needed because online and computer fraud has increased sharply this year in both its scale and sophistication.

The conference was staged as part of the software giant's ongoing brief to help law enforcement agencies forensically identify and prosecute cybercriminals.

Keiron Sharp, director general of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), raised the question of dodgy websites. "Advertisers do not care where they place an advert as long as they are paid their fee," he said.

"Before you know it you are being featured on an illegal website and have been drawn into the shady, virtual – but actually very real – world of cybercrime."

Sharp said companies were at risk irrespective of the sector in which they operated and they should check carefully where their adverts were popping up online.

"Do not think we're talking about a bunch of geeks out there. This is organised crime online. It is malicious and vindictive and it is growing in scale."

Another speaker, Lord Merlin Erroll, co-author of the House of Lords report on internet security, said more regulation was not necessarily the answer. "I get very worried when such calls are made because the danger is that it can stifle, amongst other things, innovation."

He said there was no "magic bullet" for curbing cybercrime. "IT systems must always be matched by human intelligence when it comes to achieving the right balance in society on the issue of one's ID and ensuring privacy."

Charlie McMurdie, detective superintendent in the Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PceCU) warned commercial sectors including banking, travel and construction, that a significant rise in ID and data breaches and thefts is occurring, especially involving organised gangs based in Eastern Europe.

Lately such activity has extended to an explosion in online activity involving social networking websites, according to Richard Leaning, an e-crime division specialist at the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

"Beware very clever criminal forums attaching themselves to such sites, especially from Russia. Don't believe everything you read as it is far too easy to assume a false identity and obtain an IP address."

Authorities admit they are more conversant with illegal activities like drugs, firearms and knives and do not yet know how big internet crime is.

What they do know is that "disparate e-criminal groups of hackers, coders, spammers, vendors, mules and money launderers", often based in different countries, are busy working together around the globe.

Leaning reminded private industry that it had a key part to play if everyone was ever to get on top of the growing e-crime problem.

Microsoft's UK chief security adviser Ed Gibson was responsible for bringing the conference to Scotland for the first time along with Raymond O'Hare, the software giant's Scottish director.

O'Hare, who is also chairman of IOD Scotland, said: "We are talking about absolutely critical online safety issues at stake where you must make the technology you employ work for you."

Gibson added: "When it comes to computer and internet fraud such crime has moved into a different realm with virtual gangs often organised on a cellular basis."

Microsoft had a huge responsibility because of its market share to address the issue, and has made lots of fundamental improvements to its development processes so that products are more secure.

"Unless we get on top of this growing problem they (cybercriminals] are going to take the internet to the point where people may fear to venture onto it," Gibson said.