3500 arrested in global cybercrime crackdown
scmagazine.com
scmagazine.com
If only it was so easy as running a trace on the criminal and then driving down to their location to arrest them, just like the movies.
The people running these scams are several layers removed from the people sending the texts. The big ones are careful to do some or all of it from another country. It's not as simple as tracing a number and then arresting someone.
The crackdown in the linked article involves 34 different countries. Just imagine the global police coordination required to trace that all and pull it off.
My brother recently had success in having small town cops go to a person's house to retrieve his lost+found IPhone, even. I was sure they'd tell him to sod off as a civil matter, but they retrieved it and even drove it to his house a solid 20 minutes away.
If it happens when nobody is home thus nobody is hurt, they will most like dust for prints and you will have to clean their mess as well.
They got more important things than "they stole my laptop and €500 cash". If the thieves steal amounts/treasures that are terror-funding-amounts, and/or they physically hurt someone, then they will most likely find them (someone will snitch on them as police applies pressure to they-know-who-most-likely-did-it).
I remember 20(?) years ago in the UK someone broke into an old man's home, beat him severely, and stole his (olympic game) medal(s). The thieve(s) were then severely beaten up by fellow criminals and handed to the police. I cannot remember details, and asked ChatGTP but couldn't find more information (but I swear it was a case like that).
I also know enough police officers that will tell you to your face that for petty crime without physical harm they will never go after the perps. Unless they catch them for something bigger, and by running their prints they discover/can pin on them more stuff.
You're not wrong about the bureaucracy involved in getting this done but the fact a few guys making videos for fun can make a living off doing this exact kind of thing as content suggests to me that well-resourced law enforcement should be able to do much more.
YouTubers make entertaining videos, not criminal cases.
It takes more than some YouTube-level detective work to put together a case with proper evidence gathering and to coordinate across countries.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/police-bust...
Police are overworked and have low case closure rates. If their incentives align with the case+evidence, a “YouTuber” (or any other non-expert investor), the additional steps to build a legal case can move pretty quick.
YouTube has notably different due process protections, rules of evidence, and standards of proof than criminal law in reasonable systems of government, however.
There's Youtubers that find call centers, hack into their network, watch them on their camera systems and mess with them[0]... surely the authorities could do more
0. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hacked+call+cen...
A guy who sent 17 million messages to Australian numbers lives 12kms from me and was only arrested last week.
Even if he's used false identities, it literally is "drive down the street to where these texts are coming from"
Cell triangulation is incredibly easy and accurate, especially when the average phone is pinging dozens of towers in cities with timing advances like mine is now.
This is how you resolve these sorts of issues.
Not at all true in many places. It is very easy in the states to get a phone number with cash.
Here's a whole guide: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-buy-a-burner-phone-1843905326
And that's when police actually care about catching the person.
I read in the New Zealand press that most phone crime is unprotected pbxs, Now that the telphone infrastructure has become unbundled Telecom New Zealand doesn't care about international toll fraud if you are not using telecom, and they won't contact you if there is a sudden spike of international calls like they would when they had a monopoly upto the 90s.
I don't know why people would still fraudulenty call overseas because of fibre optic cables and high speed internet, the only reason I can think of is that they want it to be harder to trace the call. If you used a stolen card and rang a home country direct and got the operator to place the call, your voice is still being recorded so your still being busted.
I have a strong dislike for scammers, I worry about elderly and the vulnerable (my parents) but I don't know the conditions that led them to that place.
Apps which use SMS 2FA and voice 2FA are highly vulnerable - scammers will create fake accounts and request recovery over and over, either to pump SMS into MVNOs they partner with, or pump voice calls through to international premium rate numbers they control.
Since the whole thing is a legacy system built with little mind to hostile actors, most phone networks aren't well equipped to distinguish from these uses and legitimate use, even though it doesn't seem like it should be particularly hard.
Unfortunately, one big-hammer solution is often to just ban countries outside of an application's target market from the auth flow, which isn't great from a sociopolitical standpoint.
Greed.
Can’t trust anything these days.
E.g., what’s the average return per phone call when the scammers phone me to let me know that my business isn’t being “properly listed” on google and bing. All I need is to give them my cc info and they’ll fix it for me.
I get that one nonstop.
Even if it is, when I press 1 and string their human along for a minute, that’s gotta be catastrophic to their ROI.
“Don’t hang up!!!” is my advice (and the opposite of various anti-fraud groups)
Even letting the line sit open for an extra 30s until the robocaller hangs up can multiply their costs.
I think if I can take as much of their time as possible that’s less time they have to scam vulnerable people. And it’s often good for a lark and quick break from the day.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
"False positives cause many promising detection technologies to be unworkable in practice. Attackers, we show, face this problem too. In deciding who to attack true positives are targets successfully attacked, while false positives are those that are attacked but yield nothing."
> The countries participating in this year’s operation were: Argentina, Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Korea, Romania, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. Hong Kong also participated.
Even in a country like Canada, the median income is only something like $40K CAD
Hey, work for me for a summer and I'll give you $80K? Sounds like a good deal if you're broke, or desperate, or young.
$80KUSD in Goa/India would be fun tool :), scam all day then rave all night \o/
Like just hacking the stock market with signals and information intelligence?
There would be further assets laundered in, for example, whoever the heck is paying $5m for a house in Vancouver that sits empty.
> seizing a total of $199 million in hard currency and a further $101 million worth of virtual assets.
Bitcoin, etc. looking rough these days as a store of value for criminals at just a 33% share.
> HAECHI
Seems to be a TV Series name in South Korea.
Also: “ Haechi is a symbolic mark that represents Seoul, developed to portray the historical tradition and unique cultural image of Seoul while giving hope and dreams to Seoul citizens. The dictionary definition of Haechi is “a mythical creature that distinguishes good and bad, what is right and what is wrong.” It is the etymological name of the more commonly used “Haetae.” In addition to being a moral being with a righteous temperament, Haechi also is believed to be a divine creature that guards people against fire and other natural disasters. It is also implied that Haechi is a guardian of Seoul that blocks all types of bad energy and brings fortune and happiness.”
https://english.seoul.go.kr/seoul-views/seoul-symbols/3-symb...
But yeah, virtual vs hard currencies could be interpreted as bank account vs paper dollars/dinars/won/baht/pesos/whatever.
There are no regulations on how you should sit on a chair within your home, therefore in so much as you are not breaking other laws while doing so, there is no such thing as illegal chair sitting in your own home.
There are regulations on driving on public roads, therefore there are such acts like 'illegal driving'. Things like driving without a permit for example.
If there are legalized forms of gambling, then as long as there are any restrictions at all, there will exist illegal forms of gambling.
The tough part in cybercrime is the selling part. Drugs sell themselves, scams don’t.