Only 100 Cybercrime Brains Worldwide, Says Europol Boss 104
mrspoonsi writes There are only "around 100" cybercriminal kingpins behind global cybercrime, according to the head of Europol's Cybercrime Centre. Speaking to the BBC, Troels Oerting said that law enforcers needed to target the "rather limited group of good programmers". "We roughly know who they are. If we can take them out of the equation then the rest will fall down," he said. "This is not a static number, it will increase unfortunately," he said. "We can still cope but the criminals have more resources and they do not have obstacles. They are driven by greed and profit and they produce malware at a speed that we have difficulties catching up with." The biggest issue facing cybercrime fighters at the moment was the fact that it was borderless. "Criminals no longer come to our countries, they commit their crimes from a distance and because of this I cannot use the normal tools to catch them. "I have to work with countries I am not used to working with and that scares me a bit," he said The majority of the cybercrime "kingpins" were located in the Russian-speaking world, he said.
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Emmanuel Goldstein doesn't exist dude. There's no need for the daily Two Minutes Hate.
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It looks like, you have all the solid logical arguments to explain that Poetterings work is pointing in the wrong way. I especially love your way of clear argumentation. However, I would recommend to be more precise next time and please try to avoid using the word fuck, body parts and relations to family members.
Thanks
Only 100 you say? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps 'only' 100 that you know about, but that statement is clearly insane. These attacks aren't just done by some long haired, Dorito fueled teenager with 16 screens and a hot girlfriend. Like everything else these days they're done by teams of people. Somebody good at Windows, somebody good at Cisco routers, someone skilled in social hacks, somebody with access to money.
I don't know why we even bother with these sorts of articles. They guy's credibility is about as good as the average politician.
"It is a tale told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
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Plenty went "white hat" over a decade ago because it was lucrative.
Just because they're not active now doesn't mean they couldn't be if they wanted to.
There's some crazy stuff you can do these days, like run code on an Intel x86 using ZERO cpu instructions [github.com].
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Wiktionary is your friend: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/... [wiktionary.org]
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Note where the statement came form. Cluelesser and cluelesser is hard to image...
I know they're trolling for comment, but what the heck, they're pathological panty sniffers anyway.
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Did you do any kind of analysis tracing existing malware to point-sources? Or did you see any data on that and did you identify and count those point-sources?
No? Then what is your opinion worth?
You seem to be confusing *operators* (i.e. the ones that actually push the button and run botnets, burglarise computers, and/or spread malware) with *researchers*, *designers* and *programmers* who never hack, but who write (and sell) the tools the operat
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There is only one reason to sell or distribute those tools freely and that is to enable the coder to hide their own activities behind the activities of thousands of other script kiddies. They also craft backdoors to enable them to randomly take over the efforts of those using their tools to increase their capability and to randomly shift the point of attack.
Of lot of this activity does of course stand out from regular traffic, really stand out, especially under bit pattern analysis, not some much as far
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I imagine it's happening in an extremely boring cubicle-like environment with hapless minions, dumb managers, a middle manager that moves air around and so on.
Ok you limited good programming bastards... (Score:5, Funny)
Troels Oerting said that law enforcers needed to target the "rather limited group of good programmers". "We roughly know who they are.
Oh, they're crafty I tell you, those little programming bastards!
Re:Ok you limited good programming bastards... (Score:5, Funny)
It's only a matter of time before they catch the greatest mastermind of them all... 4chan.
Driven by Greed and Profit and produce malware... (Score:1, Funny)
...are we talking about Microsoft here?
No shit, sherlock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No shit, sherlock (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget that a lot of people there have decent CS and maths education, but less than optimal employment opportunities.
Add to that a dim view of government in general, and you have a bunch of young people who will be happy to spend whatever time it takes to achieve a certain goal. For the wast majority the nefariousness of the goal is a complete non issue.
Re: No shit, sherlock (Score:2)
The Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc had fucking incredible mathematicians and CS guys, because that was cheaper to research than materials science or physics. Math costs little, and it keeps your smart people occupied and reasonably happy (seriously, this is still a thing). As a result, the Romanians were hands down the best assembly coders in the world, etc. â" and with the collapse of the 90's, the least employed coders. Same with the Russians. They found out the virii and Trojans could be lucrative, a
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Don't forget that a lot of people there have decent CS and maths education, but less than optimal employment opportunities.
You're absolutely right.
Add to that a dim view of government in general
If by general, you mean government anywhere, I would agree with that. A lot of the CS and math guys from over there came out with a general attitude of unlimited cynicism towards any government. As for their own government I would say the guys we're talking about here likely see their own government as being a non-issue in their enterprise. Hell, one of the top spammers from Russia wasn't busted until we found out he had a sex dungeon full of young an disabled children in his ba [krebsonsecurity.com]
Forget the missile gap (Score:1)
America has a cybercrime gap with the ex-commie-courntries and unless it can catch up quick, the economy will suffer.
Pay them off (Score:1)
They know roughly who they are, there's only 100 or so of them, forget trying to catch them or bring them down, just give them jobs.
Those who are in it for the money, give them lots of money, those who are in it for the thrill or the challenge, turn them into assets, give them money, equipment and protection then use them against unfriendly nations
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There is always a top 100 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some people just open every email they get. Seniors especially. These are the same people who are able to avoid snail mail scams, but for some reason they aren't able to carry the same skills over to email. Working in a public library I see this behavior all the time
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Shame that opening pictures in mail is the default, too. That means an instant acknowledgement that the spam mail was read and it's somewhat more serious than an attachement or a link that leads to a javascript attack if the computer is otherwise secure.
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Lots of job advancement opportunities for Number 3 thru N guys at Al Queda. The trick looks to be is to find another gig before you advance to Number 2..
As for Mr Oerling, I think he is probably delusional and is vastly underestimating both the number of serious security flaws in modern software and the number of folks attempting to find and exploit the flaws, but maybe he knows something I don't.
Good thing he's not running the NSA (Score:2)
Just more nonsense statements looking for a budget (Score:5, Insightful)
"We roughly know who they are. If we can take them out of the equation then the rest will fall down,"
The same rhetoric is encouraged by the military industrial complex to start wars that benefit their bottom line. This is no different.. "give me the resources and I'll finish it up" -- yeah, just like the War on Drugs, too, right? Nonsense. You can't attack something without the centralisation and infrastructure of stable nations or organisations, which is why things like "Bomb Isis!" fail so miserably. This dude is just making monkey statements to get funding for his department, to which even if he succeeded in taking down "the hundred kingpins", nothing would ultimately change as others would rise in 'their' place.
Let me fix that for you (Score:1)
Only 100 cybercrime brains worldwide behind organized crime
there's thousands of small time smart cyber criminals that aren't making headlines or in many cases not necessarily even doing anything 'wrong' but would technically be considered cyber criminals
Not "just 100", you fucking clueless idiot (Score:4, Informative)
Between China, North Korean and the former Soviet countries there are THOUSANDS of programmers who can make sophisticated exploits and there are probably as many in the free world.
You're just another power-hungry twit looking to implement toll-roads to everywhere on the information superhighway.
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So they're both topnotch, hardcore programmers & mafia dons? And no one will have the ability or vision to replace these "bosses"?
Remember when their used to be a Jewish mafia? Nobody replaced them, right?
Given the collective populations of Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India, the entire US-despising Muslim world, there are millions both capable blackhat hackers & criminal masterminds.
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Seems like a delusional new age witch hunt. (Score:2)
The only way to protect you're selves from cybercrime is to not put you're assets in easily accessible places by 'cyber criminals'. Believing you can catch all the criminals to end crime is the worst fallacy I've encountered.
* crime is not caused by criminals, it's caused by situations that cause the majority of people to become criminals.
* Cybercrime is on the rise because the payouts are better then other forms of crime.
* People are getting smarter and so are criminals too
* Our internet infrastructure is
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Wrong-headed thinking on your part.
People steal because they are thieves, plenty of people will not steal. A thief is a kind of evil person. Crime is caused by criminals, evil people
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No one is starving in the USA unless they are too lazy to go get their food stamps. Then they spend those on orange drinks and ho-hos, brushing both sides of the aisle at walmart with their fat bellies. I'm talking about inner city people who do most the stealing. You make excuses for laziness and evil.
I do know some people who were poor and hungry during the depression, my relatives and the cites they lived in. But they didn't steal and there was no crime. Strange how having morals and proper upbringin
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Criminals commit crimes, but they aren't the root cause of crime. I think that is the clarification that will help you understand my perspective.
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Probably in you're pockets. Or in a bank that doesn't allow online access. But wow that'd be a tough concept to sell in this day and age. I didn't say we were wrong for having our money online. I said it was just too easy to get at. And people who are inclined to commit this kind of crime are inclined to get at it online where it's easy to get at in our really terrible online banking system.
But that would be less of an issue if less people had incentive to be corrupt. In an inherently 'good' society, people
100? So Cheap! (Score:1)
Why is the NSA so expensive if they only have 100 employees?
Use the IRS? (Score:1)
Yep (Score:2)
only 100? (Score:1)
100 employers? (Score:2)
Obvious (Score:2)
Every hierarchy pyramid has a level at which there are 100 people remaining until the top. His statement was irrefutable, but useless.
They used to meet in (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Troels (Score:1)
"Troels Oerting said that law enforcers needed to target the "rather limited group of good programmers"
So, Troels is just trolling.