Introduction
Digital or cybercrimes are defined as crimes where a computer or network is: a target of the crime; is a tool used to commit a crime or an incidental aspect of the crime. Although digital crimes are a relatively new entrant onto the criminal landscape, according to Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, they are quickly becoming one of the most significant developments in crime with an estimated cost to the global economy of US$ 500 billion per year (Egan, 2013). As the definition makes clear, digital crimes can include a wide range of activities and victims. However, according to a number of experts in cybersecurity, the eight most likely areas that digital crime activity will occur are highlighted below.
Digital crime increases
According to cybersecurity experts, the report of digital crimes will rise substantially in the months and years ahead. This increase will require the reevaluation of what it means to have effective law enforcement. In order to handle the growing challenge of digital crimes, police forces will need to change their priorities, reallocate their resources, and initiate new training programs for both street police and investigating detectives. Moreover, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys will also need new training and knowledge of how to prosecute, defend and adjudicate digital crimes. Malware provides an example of the future of digital crimes. Malware is a malicious computer program or code that can, among other goals, steal passwords, access banks accounts or use the targeted device to access other computers nearby. Mobile malware specifically targets cell phones and other mobile devices and is forecast to be on the top “growth” areas for digital criminals. Two other important factors that explain why mobile malware will be the most likely area of growth, is the open-source nature of mobile operating systems such as Android which make it easy for criminals to slip bad code into a program without notice. Second, the complexities of modern mobile communications make it easier for a user to ignore proper cybersecurity precautions such as using anti-virus software that will help avoid some commonly run scams..
Internet fraud will be the most common digital crime
While digital crimes of every variety will increase, Internet fraud will stand out as its most common form. Internet fraud is mainly traditional fraud scams initiated online and with a much wider potential pool of victims readily available. Accordingly, it will affect the widest number of victims and command to largest amount of police resources to stop, investigate and prosecute. Social media provides on of the newest arenas for Internet fraud. The growing popularity of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat has made social networks a tempting place for digital criminals to implement social engineering activities designed to trick a victim into buying counterfeit objects, sending money to bogus banks, disclosing important information about themselves, their life, family and friends that can be used by a perpetrator in identity theft schemes or to trick others into thinking that they are communicating important and sensitive information with the victim.
Virtual crimes against persons will increase
Virtual crimes against persons such as cyberbullying will increase at a faster pace as opposed to traditional physical crimes such as assault. What makes virtual crimes such a tempting area of criminal activity is the increasing ownership and reliance on computers and mobile devices to access the Internet, store sensitive and private information and communicate with others. With so many devices, especial mobile phone and tablet online all day, the chances for a digital criminal to successfully infect or gain access without authorization to even a small percentage of devices is relatively high and carries a potentially great pay-off. Moreover, issues of attribution and the ability to hide behind several layers of computers make the risk that a digital criminal will get caught very low. As mentioned above, the increase in virtual crimes will require major changes to how police prevent and investigate crimes as well as new laws that criminalize online deviant activity and new public education campaigns to train the public on how to protect themselves or report an online incident to police.
Hacking groups organize
In the early days of digital crimes, hackers were often thought of as individuals acting alone in the silence of their parent’s basement. In the future, hackers are increasing likely to be highly organized, networked criminal enterprises operating from high-tech offices equipped with the latest hardware. A large number of these organized hacking groups will come from developing countries and their goals, in addition to making money, will have political, religious and nationalistic purposes. A contemporary example of this phenomenon is the Chinese APT1 hacking group that is reported to have hacked into and stolen information from a number of international organizations mainly for nationalistic purposes. As with the more traditional mafia crime organizations, these new hacking groups will be highly redundant so that if one cell is caught or captured another cell will quickly spring up to take its place.
Organized crime groups go digital
Traditional organized criminal groups such as the Japanese yakuza and the Italian mafia, having seen the promise of digital crime will increasing make it a part of their overall activity or in some cases; completely switch over to digital crime. They can accomplish this by either developing digital criminal talent on their own or hiring/acquiring the hacking groups mentioned above. For organized criminal groups, information technology not only provides a range of back-office benefits such anonymous communications and encrypted record-keeping but also a number of new areas in which to make money such as online gambling, online pornography and money-laundering through anonymous payments including such virtual payments as bitcoin, dogcoin and others.
Terrorist groups follow the mafia into digital
The wish of terrorist groups to remain anonymous to outsiders yet communicate freely amongst themselves; to expand their operations or carry out an attack without being discovered will increasing make them open to using information technologies to accomplish their goals. Indeed, in the future terrorist groups will increasingly use computers and the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate and coordinate their plans secretly. Terrorist groups will also use information technology as a tool to strike at the computers and networks of their enemies or use the computers and networks of their enemies to cause the destruction or damage that they traditional accomplished using more unsophisticated means such as bombs or bullets.
Espionage evolves as a digital crime
Espionage used to be considered the work of secret agents breaking into the military installations of a rival nation to steal their plans of a new and deadly secret weapon. In the future, espionage will performed from the computer in an office of Country A against a computer in an office in Country B. Moreover, the targeted information to be secured or won’t just be military secrets but will grow to include everything from information warfare (initiating dedicated denial of service attacks against a critical infrastructure target) to economic espionage (spying on a foreign company to benefit a domestic firm) and intellectual property theft (stealing a technology abroad in order to benefit a local entity). Moreover, espionage will not only be a tool of a national government but will increasingly be used in the private sector by companies and enterprises against their rivals.
Technology as the tool of choice
Where guns are considered a key element to certain crimes today, in the future technology will become the tool of choice for most digital criminals and terrorist. Technology will not only be used in digital crimes to steal but also to destroy targets, incapacitate networks and capture information. For example, one of the newest iterations of a very old crime is known as ransomware. When a ransomware program is downloaded onto a user’s computer or mobile device, it will encrypt important data on the device or “lock-up” a targeted computer or device completely until the owner pays a certain sum of money or “ransom” to the perpetrator for a decryption program or unlock code. Just as with mobile malware, major contributing factors to the spread of ransonware is the increasing ubiquity of computers and mobile devices, the reliance of these devices to store a wide-range of important, private and sensitive information and the ignorance of many computer and mobile device owners of proper cybersecurity precautions and countermeasures.
Conclusion
While some to the forecasts listed above may never be fully realized, it is still important for law enforcement to contemplate future possibilities so that the work they do today may help to create solutions for the future investigation and prosecution of digital crimes. Police can use the forecasts to identify key indicators in the rise of the mobile malware, the increasing use of information technology by organized crime and terrorists groups as well as the evolution of espionage as a tool of all digital criminals and increase programs for change, training and reallocation of resources to fight potential threats. For instance, law enforcement can work with information technology companies to discover better ways to prevent occurrences of digital crimes or managing outbreaks when they do occur. One recent example of this sort of collaboration can be found in the newly opened Microsoft Cybercrime Center (MCC). The MCC was designed to bring law enforcement, cybersecurity experts, lawyers and information technology vendors together under one roof to research, predict and combat digital crimes as they happen.
As with all forecasts and predictions, however, it will be difficult to anticipate every development. Still, using forecasts to increase interaction between the stakeholders will allow for the exploration and rehearsal of different and possible future occurrences of digital crimes. This will not only increase preparation for a future of digital crimes but will also now help shape the future for the better.
References
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Egan, M. (2013, July 22). Report: Cyber Crime Costs Global Economy Up to $500B a Year. Retrieved on May 23, 2014, from http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/07/22/report-cyber-crime-costs-global-economy-up-to-1-trillion-year/
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