FBI calls for global cooperation on cyber crime

CALL : FBI calls for global cooperation on cyber crime

International laws needed to combat global threat

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

vnunet.com

14 Jan 2009

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2234003/fbi-calls-global-cooperation

www.vnunet.com/2234003

The FBI has called for greater international coordination in anti-hacking laws at the first International Conference on Cyber Security.

The conference was held last week at Fordham University in New York City and was co-sponsored by the FBI. It aimed to bring together commercial companies, law enforcement and private individuals with an interest in curbing online crime.

“The FBI’s goal of sponsoring this conference is to build and forge long-lasting relationships to combat terrorist and criminal use of the Internet,” said Joseph Demarest, head of the FBI’s New York Office.

“The conference is the beginning of greater cooperation on all cyber matters.”

As an example of how such cooperation would work the FBI highlighted the work of the new 24/7 computer intrusion investigation team, which now has 55 member states contributing resources.

The FBI showed an example of how the team responds to attacks, in this example involving an initial intrusion into a bank in Mexico City initially routed through a computer in New York. This was however controlled from a computer in South Korea which was in turn traced to a machine in Thailand, where local police made an arrest.

Thanks to inter-network cooperation the team could backtrace and make an arrest within hours, rather than the weeks and months that traditional online policing would have taken.

“The bottom line is to make sure there are consequences for criminal cyber actions and similar consequences everywhere,” explained Christopher Painter, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.

“The bad guys need to know there is no free ride.”