Thursday, April 24, 2014

State and Local Law Enforcement Grapple with Cybercrime and How to Keep Up with It

When cybercriminals stole $2.5 million from the state of Utah in 2009, authorities got most of the money back—but never could find their man. 
The money was wired to a bank account in Texas, officials said, as a step before an attempt to move it overseas. Utah authorities managed to freeze much of the funding in the U.S., but couldn't figure out how the state agency got hacked and by whom, officials said. At one point, state investigators sought a man with a false name at a nonexistent address.
"It was just, for us, kind of a helpless feeling," Utah Commissioner of Public Safety Keith Squires said of the incident.
As crime is increasingly moving online, state and local police—who have spent decades refining how to track down murderers, thieves and drug dealers—are having a hard time keeping up.
Utah's cybercrime team displays photos including 
images of Al Capone to illustrate the facial-recognition
software it uses. Cayce Clifford for The Wall Street 

Journal
"It probably is one of the most perplexing questions right now in terms of state and local policing: How do they handle this stuff?" said Richard McFeely, who recently stepped down as the top cybersecurity official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "We're not generally working these cases. We need to get out ahead of this." 
In 2012, consumers reported $525 million in damages to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a group run partly by the FBI that collects data on cybercrimes, including fraud, hacking and identity theft. That was an 8% increase from the prior year.
The FBI and Secret Service have advanced tools to investigate cybercrime. The Secret Service, with private-sector firms, has been probing the theft of 40 million credit- and debit-card numbers from Target Corp. last year. But federal agencies have limited resources, and handle only the most egregious cybercrimes. That leaves most such cases to local police. 
When a computer virus infiltrated the Swansea, Mass., police department's computer network last year and threatened to destroy files unless police paid a ransom in bitcoin, the digital currency, police said they had to look up what exactly bitcoin is.
Last summer, hackers disabled the website for the Screamin Peach, a waxing salon in Fort Collins, Colo., with a flood of useless Web traffic, manager Kat Mueller said. Each time the shop's Web manager restored the site, hackers crippled it again, preventing customers from booking appointments online. Local police looked into the matter but eventually gave up. "Since the detective was unable to identify any suspects, the case has been closed," Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis said.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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