Cybercrime/online crime

FEATURE: Cybercriminals are increasingly using stolen credentials and exploiting legitimate tools and native access to “log in, instead of breaking in”, blend into their target’s environment and carry out ‘living off the land’ (LOTL) attacks; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the nature of LOTL attacks, and why all organisations – including police and law enforcement agencies – should remove all unnecessary files, applications and systems to reduce their attack surface to such threats.

FEATURE: The latest Europol Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) highlights the growing threat of cyber criminals – many of them inexperienced – using ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ platforms to steal and trade data and digital information, and attempt to hold large commercial organisations as well as individuals to ransom, as Policing Insight’s Chris Allen reports.

FEATURE: Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to two officers from the South Australian Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team (SA JACET) – one of a number of JACET units across the country – about their successes in protecting children and arresting offenders involved in online child sexual exploitation, as annual referrals to the national Centre to Counter Child Exploitation soar, increasing more than five-fold over the past seven years.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Leadership, knowledge and application are the fundamentals to continuous education and training across all policing fields, essential to keep updated on best practices, legal changes and evolving community needs. The Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies (LCAPS) offers a comprehensive learning portfolio featuring academic policing programs designed to equip police professionals with the essential skills needed to apply to the everchanging complex challenges of modern policing.

FEATURE: With evidence-based policing (EBP) now a strong focus for many law enforcement agencies, Policing Insight’s Matthew Wood looks at the 10 benchmarks for the approach set out by Dr Cynthia Lum, a former police officer and now Professor of Criminology at George Mason University – and one of the foremost authorities on EBP – during her presentation at the last Building Bridges at Blue Conference.

FEATURE: In the wake of the cyberattack on Marks & Spencer – one of several targeting British retailers in recent months – Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the lesson that can be learned, and how organisations in both the private and public sector will need to move towards new forms of mitigating risk and ensuring resilience to protect against similar threats in the future.

ANALYSIS: Last week saw the publication of the landscape review on the police response to online and technology-enabled VAWG in England and Wales, undertaken by the Centre for Protecting Women Online; independent policing and technology expert Giles Herdale, one of the three co-authors of the review, explains the key questions the work addressed, its findings, and what they mean for policing and the Government’s commitment to halve violence against women and girls over the next 10 years.

FEATURE: A new report into artificial intelligence (AI) and online crime, published by the Alan Turing Institute, has warned that UK policing needs to “get serious” about the threat posed by AI or risk a rapidly escalating problem, with calls for a new taskforce to be based in the National Crime Agency to work with national security and industry partners to tackle the threat, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: The number of sextortion cases reported to the US National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children skyrocketed from 139 in 2021 to 26,000 in 2023, and the crime is now ruining young lives in countries around the world; Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to cybercrime analyst Paul Raffile and financial investigator Detective Brad Thorne about the scale of the problem, the importance of police investigating cases, and the need to overcome challenges around international co-operation.

FEATURE: An independent review into regulating online pornography, undertaken by Conservative Peer Baroness Bertin, is calling for illegal online content to be given a renewed priority by police and the criminal justice system, to help reduce violence against women and girls as well as gain a better understanding of the links to domestic violence, toxic masculinity, and the mental health crisis among young people, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: A new report exposes the financial mechanisms that are enabling the online sexual exploitation and abuse of children on a global scale, as well as highlighting that financial institutions, tech companies and online payment platforms are also profiting from this “grotesque marketplace”, as Deborah Fry, Professor of International Child Protection Research at the University of Edinburgh and Global Director of Data for Childlight, the Global Child Safety Institute, explains.

FEATURE: A new report from the Vulnerability Knowledge Practice Programme analysing police-recorded child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) highlights the scale of the crime, gaps in reporting, and threats that could contribute to further increases in CSAE, as well as legislation and other measures that could improve the police response, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: A new report from the Financial Action Task Force explores the financial drivers behind the “heinous” crime of online child sexual exploitation, with the increasing prevalence of live-streamed sexual abuse of children and the financial sexual extortion of children creating millions of embarrassed and vulnerable young victims around the world every year, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: Last month the Spanish Council of Ministers adopted draft legislation that could introduce punitive fines for tech companies who fail to correctly label artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, in a bid to tackle ‘deepfakes’; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the aims of the bill, as well as the impact more widely of the European Union’s AI Act, which could have significant implications both for tech companies and for the police use of AI.

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INNOVATION: A new Winston Churchill Trust report exploring the international policing responses to cybercrime, written by Queensland Police Service Detective Chief Inspector Michael Newman, has highlighted a range of learning opportunities and practical takeaways around prevention, detection, investigation, and capability to improve Australia’s law enforcement efforts to target cybercriminals, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INTERVIEW: With terrorist and extremist groups looking increasingly to online platforms as a way to radicalise internet users – particularly young people – the European Commission’s Prevention of Radicalisation Unit is working hard to counter their activities; in this second in a two-part interview, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth spoke to Unit Policy Officer Friederike Wegener about the EC’s efforts to tackle the online terror threat, the role and impact of legislation, and the challenges of the future.

INTERVIEW: With terrorist and extremist groups looking increasingly to online platforms as a way to radicalise internet users – particularly young people – the European Commission’s Prevention of Radicalisation Unit is working hard to counter their activities; in this first in a two-part interview, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth spoke to Unit Policy Officer Friederike Wegener about her work with the team, the priorities of her role, and the current online terrorist threat.

FEATURE: A new Europol and Eurojust report on the challenges of tackling cybercrime has highlighted the huge volumes and difficult access to data, increasingly sophisticated anonymising measures deployed by criminals, and the legal and logistical difficulties of cross-border investigations as some of the key barriers for law enforcement, despite the “progressive strides” made by agencies and governments to address the issues, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) making the technology both more available and easier to use, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at law enforcement efforts to tackle AI-generated online child sexual abuse material – including last month’s success of Operation Cumberland, involving European, UK, Australian and New Zealand forces – as well as EU steps to tackle other damaging AI-generated online content.

FEATURE: Last month saw joint calls from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, College of Police and Counter-Terrorism Policing for UK policing to be given more freedom to share details around investigations that could help to quell the online misinformation fuelling violence and disorder; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the challenges around sharing of information, as well as the artificial intelligence tools that can help to tackle misinformation.

ANALYSIS: New laws proposed by the UK Government will be the first in the world to make it an offence to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material; Simon Bailey, Chair of the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute (IPPPRI), and IPPPRI Director, Professor Sam Lundigran, explain why the new laws will be crucial in the fight against the growing scale of AI-generated online child abuse images.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Leadership, knowledge and application are the fundamentals to continuous education and training across all policing fields, essential to keep updated on best practices, legal changes and evolving community needs. The Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies (LCAPS) offers a comprehensive learning portfolio featuring academic policing programs designed to equip police professionals with the essential skills needed to apply to the everchanging complex challenges of modern policing.

OPINION: With the growing availability and accessibility of generative artificial intelligence leading to a huge increase in deepfaked non-consensual intimate image (NCII) abuse, independent policing and technology expert Giles Herdale sets out some of the key challenges around tackling NCII, and suggest four steps that could make a significant difference in reducing offences and improving outcomes for victims.