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Comment by ge96 | Hacker News Reader

Are cops actually prepared for this sort of thing? If you handed them the information and was like "Here's a hacker, take them down." The cops have a division or something for cyber security enforcement or whatever? I'm just asking as I don't imagine police officers being the tech type regarding hacking.

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Even if they were prepared for cyber crime, would they be prepared to act on information you give them? Sure, if you supply law enforcement with the location of your recently stolen electronic device they will go after it (as I've had them do twice now). That's pretty straightforward. On the other hand if you give them the details of some purported fraudster, of whom you are not even a victim, a thorough investigation would be necessary prior to any action on their part. At least I'd hope so, otherwise there's a whole new genre of swatting (i.e. framing unsuspecting victims as black hat hackers) that has yet to be exploited.

I'm just concerned if they have the technical know-how of doing it. I mean yeah what you said is right. The proof. Otherwise going after someobody who might be innocent.

You should go ahead and call your local police department. Chances are that they don't deal with cyber crimes unless you live in a large city (or if your city contracts with a larger police department).

There's also the issue of jurisdiction. If the crime is originating across some border (which more than likely it is), there's probably not much they're willing to do about it.

nothing to report, just wondering

I meant call them and ask about how they handle cyber crimes. It's part of their job to answer questions about public security.

Ran an image hosting website, "hackers" uploaded some nasty content over Tor, I gave law enforcement the exit node IP addresses but really there wasn't much they could do. It depends on the amount of information available I guess.

What do you do for checking what is uploaded? Do you use a service like Amazon Mechanical Turk and have people go over the content or do you use something like computer vision?

Exit node ip, that's the last ip-address right? There was something in PHP I did recently that did that, gave you the last ip. Maybe I'm mistaken.

Are "cops" prepared for handling multi-million dollar frauds in general? The people reporting this sort of activity aren't wandering into their local police station, they will have the right contacts with the right parts of the state / national agency responsible. Fraud (almost) any form isn't dealt with by the police officers you interact with on a daily basis, just like other serious crime.

Yes, Police has these kind of divisions.

E.g. these are the Spanish ones:

https://www.gdt.guardiacivil.es/webgdt/home_alerta.php

http://www.policia.es/org_central/judicial/udef/bit_alertas....

Like a lot of things, I'd imagine the capability varies tremendously among the different police departments. I wouldn't be surprised if New York or London police have sophisticated detectives dedicated to cyber-security. (I also wouldn't be surprised if they're still woefully outmatched, either)

Meanwhile, if I were to deliver this info to my local police department, I have very little faith they'd even know what I'm talking about.

That doesn't seem like something which'd make sense at the local police level though, as chances are high it's international, or at the very least interstate. I would think (when the local cops don't just decide to ignore it) this kind of things gets escalated to the feds.

When local police arrived, I had to explain Skype to them. This is when I realised they probably couldn't do anything about it.

It could be that their security experts were in their early twenties and had never heard of skype.

My 13-year-old brother and sister are on skype constantly. If the computer's open, skype is running in the background.

Skype is also well-known among current chinese college students.

Basically, I think it's unlikely that anyone in their early twenties has never heard of skype.

The problem is those experienced police officers can earn more in the private sector and police forces tend to have difficulty keeping staff - also as the FBI has found recruiting cyber spooks is difficult

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