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Only 100 Cybercrime Brains Worldwide, Says Europol Boss

Posted by timothy on from the but-they-are-evil-brains dept.

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.

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. No shit, sherlock by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course the top cyber criminals are from former soviet bloc countries. That's where the top spammers have resided for a long time as well, and there is a lot of overlap between the two sets. While in the US we don't have anti-spam laws that mean anything, in those countries the people tasked with enforcing the laws are openly accepting bribes from people who violate them.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:No shit, sherlock by Caedite+Eos · · 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.

  2. There is always a top 100 by BigSlowTarget · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is about like going after Al Queda's no 2 guy. There will always be more and really if you have problems with these guys the next set are going to throw you into fits.

  3. Just more nonsense statements looking for a budget by Rick+in+China · · 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.