By Omolara Beyioku

 
Lagos. October 20, 2008. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said it has worked with partners in international law enforcement, to bust a criminal ring of the online “carding” forum known as Dark Market.

According to the law enforcement agency, the two-year undercover operation led to over 56 arrests and prevention of economic loss estimated at about $70 million.

Assistant Director of the FBI's Cyber Division, Shawn Henry, has also warned that crooks and spies using the Internet to commit crimes against U.S. businesses and to attack government networks are getting more sophisticated, and the increasing number of such crimes not only impacts the economy but threatens her national security.

Giving details of the FBI bust, he says that cyber criminals using Dark Market represented a virtual transnational criminal network spanning numerous countries who were involved with the buying and selling of stolen financial information including credit card data, login credentials (user names and passwords), as well as equipment used in carrying out certain financial crimes. At its peak the Dark Market website had over 2,500 registered members.

According to the FBI chief, the primary objective of this operation was to infiltrate the forum, develop intelligence on its leading members, and in coordination with U.S. and international law enforcement partners, systematically identify, locate, and arrest them over a sustained period.

That paid off with as the undercover operation resulted in 56 arrests worldwide. Additionally, $70 million in economic loss was prevented from the seizure of compromised victim accounts. Separate from these successes, this operation created new leads and more investigative information to pursue. These efforts are being followed up by the FBI and international law enforcement partners.

“In today’s world of rapidly expanding technology, where cyber crimes are perpetrated instantly from anywhere in the world, law enforcement needs to be flexible and creative in our efforts to target these criminals. Leads in many of these investigations take us to the online world of Internet forums, where criminals go to engage in the business of selling and trading innocent person’s credit card numbers and other personal information. By joining forces with our international law enforcement counterparts, we have been, and will continue to be, successful in arresting those individuals and dismantling these forums. The arrests this week in the U.K. are a good demonstration of the coordination taking place today between the FBI, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and other law enforcement agencies around the globe”, says Henry.

The FBI said that the undercover operation was conducted with the assistance of multiple domestic and international law enforcement partners, including the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, United Kingdom’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, Turkish National Police – KOM Department, Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police in Wiesbaden), and the Landeskriminalamt Baden – Wuerrtemberg (State Police of Baden Wuerrtemberg).

Meanwhile, the FBI chief says that the agency is concerned over growing threat of cyber crime as it has “thousands of open cases into cyber crimes and organized cyber attacks and detailing our strategy to protect the nation’s networks.”

“The business of the United States is done on the Internet,” said Henry, a veteran cyber crime investigator. And the information that flows electronically 24/7 is increasingly the target of not only identity thieves and scammers, but organized crime groups, terrorists, and overseas governments.

“There are a number of countries who have an interest in stealing information from the United States,” Henry adds, explaining that as many as two dozen nations have taken an “aggressive interest” in penetrating our networks. In the past year, he added, “the malicious activity has become much more prevalent.”

Malicious activity could come in the form of attacks that deny access to websites, that compromise sensitive information, or that introduce “botnets” that spread viruses and covertly co-opt computers to carry out data theft.

“There are a number of countries who have an interest in stealing information from the United States,” Henry said, explaining that as many as two dozen nations have taken an “aggressive interest” in penetrating our networks.

New groups of hackers—virtual gangs—are a growing threat as well, banding together to pool their expertise and carry out coordinated cyber attacks. Henry pointed out that in years gone by, if a gang wanted to rob a bank, it needed crooks with various skills—safe cracker, get-away driver, look-out, etc. That’s essentially what we’re seeing in the cyber world today, only these virtual gang members have never met in the physical world. “There are organized groups that are very successful,” he adds.

To address the rising threat, the Cyber Division has a threefold strategic plan—“Prioritize, Proactive, Partnerships.”

By prioritizing our efforts, we can go after the most critical threats. Being proactive means adopting the same time-tested investigative techniques that have been so successful in our physical crime investigations—the use of informants, electronic surveillance, and placement of undercover agents to penetrate and dismantle virtual criminal operations, says FBI.

The third “P”—partnerships—means building even stronger relationships with law enforcement agencies worldwide. He said we’ve worked with such countries as Great Britain, Canada, Russia, and Turkey to swap best practices and techniques. We’ve also sent agents to Romania to work with law enforcement there, leading to nearly 100 arrests in cyber crime cases representing “tens of millions of dollars” in losses, Henry adds.

And the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3—a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center—continues to assist state and local law enforcement in fighting cyber crime. Since its establishment in 2000, IC3 has received more than a million complaints. In the last couple of years, there’s been an “uptick” in the number of reports, according to him. Lately, they’re coming in at the rate of nearly 20,000 per month.