Internet crime fraud

1
Internet crime (fraud identity theft)

• How criminals hide their identity online.
• By Bill Westhead
• Director
• Crime Scene House Ltd.
• RSS4 Ltd.

2
Synopsis

• Online crime is a growth business. With rewards
  that parallel major armed robberies, and minimal
  risk of being caught and prosecuted, high tech
  crime is becoming increasingly attractive to
  criminals.
• Traditional tracing methods are largely
  ineffective when locations and actions can easily
  be obfuscated and spoofed on a worldwide level.
• It has been said, that criminals are dumb, that
  is why they get caught I prefer the view that
  only dumb criminals get caught. Sophisticated
  tools or 'rootkits' are readily available to
  anyone with limited technical knowledge and
  through these user-friendly crimeware packages,
  it is possible to conceal acts of fraud, theft,
  extortion and money laundering.
• How then can businesses and law enforcement
  combat these threats and still allow profitable
  commerce online?

3
Who am I?

• According to the schedule, my name is Bill
  Westhead, and I'm here to talk to you about
  Internet crime.
• Was there a picture on the invite of me? Well no,
  but I am talking about identity, so I must be
  Bill.
• I'm also at this conference in the company of
  police officers and criminologists, so it seems
  logical I'm here to talk about preventing crime,
  rather than committing it.
• The truth is though, how do you really know? On
  the Internet this is even harder to determine.

4
Who can be a criminal?

• Tracing emails
• Spoofing email accounts
• Sending obfuscated emails
• How can this abuse be caught?

5
Free anonymous Internet access.

• Afraid online activity is being monitored?
• Some 80 of Wi-Fi
• routers are unsecured
• Steal access from unsecured Wi-Fi points
• Access the Internet via stolen Wi-Fi

6
Avoiding the detectives

• When actions are investigated, the Wi-Fi point
  can be identified
• There is no physical connection between the
  illegal access and the account owner
• Avoid areas with CCTV and there will be little or
  no evidence a criminal was there.

7
Going global

• Send out infect email messages
• Some of these succeed and infect other machines
• Build the botnet, send and receive data
• A network can be built and disbanded within a few
  hours

8
Taking control

• Rootkits, viruses and trojans
• Spyware, crimeware and phishing
• Dilute the evidence of the creator
• Distribute globally rootkit.com

9
Show me the money

• Steal credit card details for cloning
• Lease the network on the black market
• Launch phishing and identity theft harvesting

10
From virus to credit card clone

• Many viruses can also install keylogging and
  monitoring spyware / crimeware
• These can be used to scan for credit card numbers
  and personal details
• Lists of these details can be sold to credit card
  cloning syndicates

11
Black market services by the hour

• Botnets of computers represent a significant
  amount of processing power
• These hostage computers can be put to use and
  leased to criminal groups
• From a few hours work criminal millionaires are
  made

12
Phishing for money

• Phishing for money
• Stealing account details
• Creating bogus websites
• Stealing and laundering money

13
Rootkit for crimeware

• The previous examples are only the tip of the
  iceberg
• Political activisim (aka Hacktivism)
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks (aka
  extortion)
• Home worker networks (aka money laundering)

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Simple technology for all

• Anyone can use these techniques
• Criminals do not have to
• be computer experts
• Hackers distribute tool kits
• Criminal use is growing rapidly.

15
How do you stop it all?

• Traditional fraud investigation techniques will
  work
• Augment these with digital
• intelligence and honeypots
• Prevention is always better - educate

16
Contact details

• Email bill.westhead_at_crimescenehouse.com
• Mobile [phone]
• Web http//www.crimescenehouse.com/