[ISN] Cyber-crime crackdown

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Tue May 27 2003 - 00:03:09 PDT

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    http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/24/1053585741118.html
    
    May 25 2003
    By Nathan Cochrane
    
    The newly minted Australian High Tech Crime Centre could collect its
    first scalp on Thursday when a 17-year-old faces the Adelaide Youth
    Court charged with a single count of illicitly receiving $4890 from an
    ANZ customer's internet banking account.
    
    It will be alleged that the youth received proceeds from an
    unauthorised internet banking transaction after the funds were
    transferred to Adelaide.
    
    Agents from the Crime Centre and South Australian police raided a home
    last week where they arrested the youth. Other charges are expected to
    be laid, a spokesman for the Australian Federal Police said.
    
    The High Tech Crime Centre is an AFP creation and will be hosted at
    the AFP's headquarters in Canberra. It was created, in part, as a
    response to the rising tide of computer break-ins by outside hackers
    detailed in the latest Computer Crime and Security Survey released
    earlier this month.
    
    The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), together
    with state and federal police, found that although the rate of cyber
    crime had fallen, the likelihood that it would be perpetrated by
    outside hackers had increased.
    
    In the 2002 survey, 67 per cent of respondent organisations reported
    an intrusion, compared with 42 per cent in the latest figures. But
    external attacks that damaged computer systems or data afflicted 91
    per cent of respondents, while just 36 per cent came from within
    organisations.
    
    That is a turnaround from earlier studies identifying malicious
    insiders with legitimate network access, such as disgruntled
    employees, as the main weak spot in an organisation's computer
    security.
    
    AusCERT blames the increasing reliance on the insecure internet for
    the rise in external hacking attempts.
    
    Security and law enforcement agencies are cracking down globally on
    computer crime as part of the broader war on terrorism.
    
    Thai police last week, at the urging of the US Secret Service,
    arrested a 25-year-old Ukrainian man, Maksym Kovalchuk, who is alleged
    to be the mastermind behind a $3 million global software piracy and
    internet fraud ring.
    
    
    
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