Efforts to combat cybercrime concentrate on enhanced security, but intercepting the kids drawn into its web might prove better
Whenever William Hague, our esteemed foreign secretary, speaks on the subject of cyberspace, what comes to mind is Dr Johnson's celebrated comment about seeing a dog walking on its hind legs: one is surprised, not that the thing is done well, but that it is done at all. And there he was last Monday evening, hosting a reception in the Science Museum to launch the government's lavish talkfest, the London Conference on Cyberspace. The subject was, he told his agreeably lubricated audience, "a phenomenon that has dramatically shaped the way we live, work and interact". The conference was "the first international conference of its kind", and would facilitate all kinds of dialogue on the "threats and opportunities" of cyberspace.
The conference was a testimony to how far the Foreign Office has travelled in the last decade and a half. From being an outfit that was wary of the net, it has become an admired example of how a government department can engage productively with the networked world. Earlier this year, I met a senior foreign diplomat who, concerned that his country's foreign service was way behind the curve, had come to Britain to observe how the FCO was harnessing the internet. He went away very impressed, nay stunned, by the way in which the department engages with online services (it even allows its diplomats to blog as individuals). When researching this column, I came across a couple of YouTube videos about the conference made, not by an official in Whitehall, but by Judith Macgregor, Britain's ambassador to Mexico – in both English and flawless Spanish.
William Hague talked of "threats and opportunities" but much of the talk at the conference inevitably focused on the former. And with good reason. Most governments have now woken up to the fact that cybercrime is a booming business. Reliable statistics are hard to come by: online crime is massively under-reported by banks and many of the organisations publishing scary numbers have a vested interest in raising hairs. But nobody doubts that cyberspace has become a really lucrative opportunity for crooks. The most recent "state of cybercrime" report from Symantec, a security firm, asserts that cybercrime now costs the world $388bn annually, of which $114bn is the direct cash cost of online fraud, and the remainder the indirect costs of dealing with its consequences. This is bigger than the black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined.
Most people have at least a hazy idea of how the drugs trade operates, but ignorance about cybercrime is nearly total. The potential rewards of online skulduggery are as great as those from drugs, but the risks of detection and punishment are negligible by comparison. So if you were a rational criminal today you'd be much better off launching phishing expeditions to obtain people's bank details. That way you don't have to worry about being shot by your criminal competitors; and the risks of having your collar felt by PC Plod are infinitesimal.
To date, the best insight we've got into the arcane world of cybercrime is a recent book by Misha Glenny entitled Dark Market: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You (Bodley Head). Mr Glenny is not a geek but an experienced investigative journalist and he had the interesting idea of focusing not on technology but on a number of individuals who were once bigshots in the cyber-underground but who were – for the most part – eventually apprehended by law enforcement.
Two things stand out from his account. The first is the uncanny way in which the cybercriminal community mirrors the real world of online commerce. Thousands of people regularly "skim" credit-card details, for example, but then have to find people who will feed cloned cards into ATM machines so that the resulting cash can be, as it were, harvested. How does one recruit such people? How does one sell stolen card details? And how can criminals (who by definition are untrustworthy individuals) establish online trading systems on which they can rely? The answer is by setting up trading and recruitment exchanges such as CardersMarket and Darkmarket and using escrow systems just like lawyers do in the real (legitimate) world.
The other striking thought triggered by Mr Glenny's book is that our current approaches to cybercrime are too focused on security technology (on which the governments represented at the London conference are spending billions) and too little focused on psychology. Cybercriminals have pretty distinctive personality profiles; they tend to be clever, young and overwhelmingly male. Often they wander into crime more or less by accident. They might therefore be easy to spot and perhaps divert before they ever skim a credit card. And if we could catch them young, then cyberspace might become a safer place.
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Whenever William Hague, our esteemed foreign secretary, speaks on the subject of cyberspace, what comes to mind is Dr Johnson's celebrated comment about seeing a dog walking on its hind legs: one is surprised, not that the thing is done well, but that it is done at all. And there he was last Monday evening, hosting a reception in the Science Museum to launch the government's lavish talkfest, the London Conference on Cyberspace. The subject was, he told his agreeably lubricated audience, "a phenomenon that has dramatically shaped the way we live, work and interact". The conference was "the first international conference of its kind", and would facilitate all kinds of dialogue on the "threats and opportunities" of cyberspace.
The conference was a testimony to how far the Foreign Office has travelled in the last decade and a half. From being an outfit that was wary of the net, it has become an admired example of how a government department can engage productively with the networked world. Earlier this year, I met a senior foreign diplomat who, concerned that his country's foreign service was way behind the curve, had come to Britain to observe how the FCO was harnessing the internet. He went away very impressed, nay stunned, by the way in which the department engages with online services (it even allows its diplomats to blog as individuals). When researching this column, I came across a couple of YouTube videos about the conference made, not by an official in Whitehall, but by Judith Macgregor, Britain's ambassador to Mexico – in both English and flawless Spanish.
William Hague talked of "threats and opportunities" but much of the talk at the conference inevitably focused on the former. And with good reason. Most governments have now woken up to the fact that cybercrime is a booming business. Reliable statistics are hard to come by: online crime is massively under-reported by banks and many of the organisations publishing scary numbers have a vested interest in raising hairs. But nobody doubts that cyberspace has become a really lucrative opportunity for crooks. The most recent "state of cybercrime" report from Symantec, a security firm, asserts that cybercrime now costs the world $388bn annually, of which $114bn is the direct cash cost of online fraud, and the remainder the indirect costs of dealing with its consequences. This is bigger than the black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined.
Most people have at least a hazy idea of how the drugs trade operates, but ignorance about cybercrime is nearly total. The potential rewards of online skulduggery are as great as those from drugs, but the risks of detection and punishment are negligible by comparison. So if you were a rational criminal today you'd be much better off launching phishing expeditions to obtain people's bank details. That way you don't have to worry about being shot by your criminal competitors; and the risks of having your collar felt by PC Plod are infinitesimal.
To date, the best insight we've got into the arcane world of cybercrime is a recent book by Misha Glenny entitled Dark Market: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You (Bodley Head). Mr Glenny is not a geek but an experienced investigative journalist and he had the interesting idea of focusing not on technology but on a number of individuals who were once bigshots in the cyber-underground but who were – for the most part – eventually apprehended by law enforcement.
Two things stand out from his account. The first is the uncanny way in which the cybercriminal community mirrors the real world of online commerce. Thousands of people regularly "skim" credit-card details, for example, but then have to find people who will feed cloned cards into ATM machines so that the resulting cash can be, as it were, harvested. How does one recruit such people? How does one sell stolen card details? And how can criminals (who by definition are untrustworthy individuals) establish online trading systems on which they can rely? The answer is by setting up trading and recruitment exchanges such as CardersMarket and Darkmarket and using escrow systems just like lawyers do in the real (legitimate) world.
The other striking thought triggered by Mr Glenny's book is that our current approaches to cybercrime are too focused on security technology (on which the governments represented at the London conference are spending billions) and too little focused on psychology. Cybercriminals have pretty distinctive personality profiles; they tend to be clever, young and overwhelmingly male. Often they wander into crime more or less by accident. They might therefore be easy to spot and perhaps divert before they ever skim a credit card. And if we could catch them young, then cyberspace might become a safer place.
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Thank you.
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