Forwarded From: Frans Mulschlegel <Mulschlegel_FJt_private> Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05t_private> FBI Helping Thailand To Catch Computer Criminals OTC 4/14/98 7:16 PM BANGKOK, THAILAND, 1998 APR 14 (Newsbytes) -- By Pongpen Sutharoj, The Nation. Computer technology is becoming a new tool to commit crime from anywhere around the world. It's essential that police with new electronic investigation techniques adjust to cope up with a new breed of criminals. Modern-day crime is not the same as in earlier times. The gun once used as a tool by bank robbers has changed to a portable computer. The trigger finger has been replaced by fingers tapping on a keyboard. Financial institutions can now be rapidly attacked from anywhere around the world, electronically. Computer crime has been around for several years, starting when computer systems began to link electronically for business purposes. The new breed of criminal uses advantages and loopholes found in computer networks to get inside businesses. In the past few years the case of Citibank became an example of the new trend in crime. Working from Russia, a 30-year-old hacker, Vladimir Leonidovich Levin, used his laptop computer to hack into the bank's computer system in the United States and stole US$10 million from the bank, remotely. The case was investigated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, which eventually caught Levin by following an electronic trail of evidence. A month ago, Levin was sentenced in New York to 36 months in prison. David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University, widely recognized for its computer crime research, has said that anywhere computers are used, there is likely to be computer crime, in both advanced or still developing countries. Pol Colonel Peeraphan Prempooti, the Foreign Affairs' deputy commander of the Royal Thai Police Department who is involved in computer crime investigation in Thailand, said that computer systems which are linked to networks help criminals to organize crime since they are no longer limited to committing a crime in one country. He said therefore it's difficult for police in each country to know where the crime is being organized. The way to suppress crime has to change to cope with the new breed of high technology criminals. The FBI is an investigation agency with more experience coping with suppression of computer crime. The agency has trained its staff to electronically investigate crimes using laptop computers. Two years ago, it set up a special unit, called the Criminal Squad 37, specifically to track down criminals who attack computer systems. The FBI is presently investigating 500 computer crime cases, up from 200 in 1996. Even though Thailand does not yet have advanced computer crime investigation techniques like the FBI, the Royal Thai Police Department, which oversees crime prevention and suppression, has also paid serious attention to the issue. The department two years ago began to train Thai police to tackle a new type of crime and at this stage, claims to have around 15,000 officers, or 30 per cent of all Thai investigating police, who can deal with this new form of crime. Peeraphan said this is the first step. The police department plans to train all 200,000 Thai police related to crime investigation to handle computer crime. Since computer crime is considered to be the crime of the future, the department has also established computer crime courses in training centers for all police levels, starting from police students through to police commanders. Meanwhile the department has cooperated with the US government to set up a new international police college in Thailand, hoping to train Thai police as well as other related law enforcement authorities in the latest methods of suppressing new activities such as computer crime, commercial crime, and corruption investigations. The new college is expected to open in June this year. He said the US government will help absorb all costs related to training. All training courses will also be done to the same standard as FBI courses. The idea to help Thai police to deal with this new form of crime stemmed from a computer-related crime case five years ago when Thai police had a request from Interpol, an international police agency. They were asked to arrest a foreigner who used Thailand as a base to steal US$20 million from a bank in Switzerland via a computer network. Peepaphan said with that cooperation, the Thai police arrested a man who used his laptop computer to connect to the Swiss bank's computer system to transfer money to his accounts in New York and Australia illegally. In this case the man stole the bank's password to get into the computer system and make a fake financial transfer order. "At that time, Interpol made an electronic investigation and eventually found that the crime was committed in Thailand. Interpol asked Thai police to arrest the suspect, who we found in a hotel here with his laptop computer as evidence," he said. He added that this case made the department realize that computers can be used as a new tool to commit crime and Thai police needed to tackle this unexpected case. Peeraphan said police will soon be able to trace computer crime cases and find the source of the crime if they understand the cycle of computer crime. This is because on computer systems, any transactions are recorded, allowing the police to trace where the transaction originated. The electronic trail easily leads police to the source of the crime. To achieve that, Thai police have to be trained to understand the whole process of computer crime investigation. At the very minimum, they have to know the fundamentals of collecting and investigating digital evidence in various incidents. "They have to know how to make an audit-trial on each computer system they find in the incident. This is to prove whether a particular computer system has been used for committing a crime or not," he added. An audit-trial is a method of checking what computer system has been used. Peepaphan added there are some software programs that can analyze the history of the files used in a particular system and tell which keystrokes have been made. This software can also be used in computer crime investigations. In addition, the police can ask for assistance from local Internet service providers to monitor the Internet use records of users suspected of organizing a crime. Many businessmen consider that the possibility of computer crime is a factor stopping them doing electronic commerce on the network. Peeraphan explained that even though the country does not have a specific law for computer crime at the moment, the law enforcement authorities can adapt the country's criminal law in computer crime cases. Nevertheless, he said the country will have to enact a special law for this new type of crime in the near future. Reported by Newsbytes News Network http://www.newsbytes.com -o- Subscribe: mail majordomot_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Dimensional Communications (www.dim.com)
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