Essay Example on Europol's IOCTA: Five Years of Combating Cybercrime

For five years in a row, Europol has produced the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA). This assessment intends to provide an all-inclusive overview of the currently existing as well as the projected future trends of crimes and threats directed or assisted online. As the current activities illustrate how cybercrime is continuously evolving, this annuals year IOCTA describes to us how law enforcement can be applied to fight both persistent forms as well as innovative type crimes. The report largely is an addition and builds up on the previous editions which highlights the endurance of the many forms of cybercrime. It is also a proof to any established cybercrime business model, where there is necessity to change an existing working modus operandi ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019). The report also indicates various challenges faced in the fight against cybercrime.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The malicious software popularly known as ransonware continues to dominate. Even though its growth and effects are beginning to reduce, ransomware is still overtaking Trojans in the financially - driven malware attacks, a trend that is expected to continuous for years to come. Besides the attacks by financially inspired criminals, a huge volume of public reports increasingly points global cyber-attacks to the activities of states. Mobile malware has been recognized as an expected future risk for both public and private entities alike though it has not been widely reported in 2017. It's considered a prominent risk to illegally acquire data following a data breach since lawbreakers usually utilize the obtained data to further facilitate their criminal activity. In the 2017, Equifax was embroiled in a major data breach, with its effect reaching more than 100 million credit users globally. With the GDPR regulation taking effect in the EU in May 2018, it will now be a legal requirement across the EU to report any data breach coming with new challenges, threats, and hefty fines ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).As the internet becomes readily available and more accessible to young children, their presence and numbers on social media platforms increases and therefore exposed to the risks of sexual online exploitation as extortion continues to grow. The major increase in the amount of SGEM live streaming on social media platforms is attributed to the popularity of social media applications. The payment fraud is largely dominated by Card-not-present fraud as skimming continues. Skimming is a rampant problem in most of the member states of the EU. However, this continues to decline resulting from geoblocking measures as experienced over the previous years. The Darknet is the platform that sells skimmed card data while it is cashed in regions where Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) operation is either non-existent or slow. In this year, toll fraud has received a significant amounts of attention, with criminal gangs using counterfeit credit and debit cards to evade the payment of toll fees. Many EU states also reported an increase in the registration of ghost companies to access and abuse point of sale, as well as benefit from compromised data. Meanwhile, the transport and retail sectors of the EU member states have been highlighted as the key threats by the card- not-present fraud ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).

As the abuse cryptocurrencies by criminals take a rise, currency exchangers and users become targeted. Other reports indicates that criminals continue abusing cryptocurrencies to finance their criminal operations. Bitcoin remains the main cryptocurrency faced by law enforcement even though it has lost its popularity of the entire cryptocurrency market share. Currency miners, exchangers and different wallet holders are being faced by extortion as well as hacking attempts of theft and breach of their personal data ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).

As the abuse cryptocurrencies by criminals take a rise, currency exchangers and users become targeted. Other reports indicates that criminals continue abusing cryptocurrencies to finance their criminal operations. Bitcoin remains the main cryptocurrency faced by law enforcement even though it has lost its popularity of the entire cryptocurrency market share. Currency miners, exchangers and different wallet holders are being faced by extortion as well as hacking attempts of theft and breach of their personal data. Money fraudsters have advanced to utilize cryptocurrencies in their activities and are increasingly being facilitated by new improvements like distributed exchanges which permits for currency exchange without the requirements of knowing your customer. In 2017, three of the biggest Darknet players: RAMP, Alphaby and Hansa were shut down by the law enforcement agencies. These takedown forced users to migrate to newly founded or established markets or to other completely different platforms like encrypted communications apps ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).

Key findings show that ransomware stands as a key major risk both in industry reporting and to law enforcement agencies. Cryptomining malware is anticipated to be a regular, small-risk revenue channel for cybercriminals. The use of exploit kits for infection reduces continuously with social engineering, spam and other new approaches like Remote Desktop Protocol taking the frontline. New laws that relates to data breaches will probably result in better reporting of breaches to law enforcement agencies and the issues of cyber-extortion. There is a detected growth in online Child Sexual Exploitation Material that now creates a big challenge to both victim identification efforts and investigations process. Criminals are getting advanced by the use of encryption and anonymisation and easy access to internet as the cases of children sexual exploitation increases due to widespread use of the internet ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019)..

The Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) attempts to guide policymakers at tactical, strategic and decision levels in the combat against cybercrime. As witnessed with other cyber-attacks, as the criminal tools become sophisticated and more adept, lesser attacks are targeted on citizens and more targets on small businesses, where better potential profits reside. In 2018, Polish National Police together with Europol arrested a polish national called "Armaged0n suspected of encrypting thousands of computers owned by Polish organizations between 2013 and 2018 using ransomware outspread through mail correspondence purporting to be from famous companies like retailers and banks ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).

Cryptojacking is a comparatively new concept that refers to any method that makes use of bandwidth processing power of a device to mine cryptocurrencies illegally without the permission of the user. Network attacks and data breaches is the heart of almost any system and is not only such a valuable commodity in the digital world, but the attacks aim at illegally destroying, acquiring or blocking access to the data.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks across this report, DDOS have been persistent and rising threat highlighted by the EU law enforcement agencies. Every year, there must be a headline- grabbing attack of unmatched measure and this average keeps increasing upwards. The increasing tendency of similar attacks therefore reflects on the increasing accessibility and availability of cybercrime tools; that may also be an important milestone towards being involved in more grave cybercrimes ("Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018", 2019).

Future threats and ransomware will continue to thrive, as shown by law enforcement reporting agencies and the industrial sector. In a few years, ransomware has become a main attack technique for cybercriminals, quickly accommodating similar features to other effective malware like the service business models and the affiliate programs, becoming more accessible and available to all levels of cybercriminal. A five year projection on mobile malware may increase as users move from online to mobile banking systems. As mobile banking takes over online banking, we anticipate advanced growth and improvements of mobile malware aiming at users of such a service.

Reference

Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2018. (2019). Retrieved 14 October 2019, from https://www.europol.europa.eu/internet-organised-crime-threat-assessment-2018