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Inquiry into Cyber Crime
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Transcript: Video presentation promoting Cyber Crime Inquiry
24 June 2009
Video presentation at www.aph.gov.au/coms
[Voice Over]: The House of Representatives Communications Committee is investigating cyber crime and its impact on Australian consumers and the wider economy. Committee Chair Belinda Neal talks about why it’s important to protect consumers from online threats.
Belinda Neal MP, Committee Chair: Over the last decade the internet has revolutionised the way we do business and the way we communicate with each other. Online banking and purchasing goods and services is routine for millions of consumers and the use of email and social networking sites to communicate with friends and family has become common place. In this period access to computers and the internet by Australian households has more than quadrupled. According to the ABS, by 2006 there were over six and a half million active internet subscribers in Australia and seventy five percent of all households had a computer. With our reputation for fast take up of new technologies and the roll out of the national high speed broadband, these trends are likely to continue.
E-commerce has quickly become an important part of the Australian economy so it is important that we make the online environment as safe as possible. Unfortunately, while the growth in new communication technologies has brought many benefits, there has also been a growth in online criminal activity that exposes us all to the new threat of ‘cyber crime’.
‘Cyber crime’ or ‘technology enabled crime’ as it is sometimes called, refers to specific computer crimes, such as malicious hacking into computers and unauthorised changing of data. It also includes traditional crimes such as identity theft and financial fraud, that technology enables the criminal to commit more easily.
One of the recent and concerning trends is away from the ‘curious hacker’ who uses their skill for fun and toward a greater sophistication - people with technical skills who produce the malicious software that infect our computers are joining forces with financially motivated criminals who want to steal personal information or launder money. The underground market in stolen digital information creates an incentive for these criminals to carry out more crimes.
To give an example, a computer can be infected and be used to carry out a crime without the owner’s knowledge, all you might notice is that your computer is running more slowly than usual. The computer acts like a robot controlled by another command computer. It is possible to infect hundreds of computers and control them remotely to carry out crimes anywhere in the world. These ‘bot nets’, as they are called, can be programmed to hack into other computers and steal data or be used to send out huge volumes of spam emails. They represent a significant threat.
Spam emails are also a real nuisance - the volume of global spam is enormous despite the efforts of governments to crack down on unauthorised advertising. Spam is also used to distribute scams intended to trick people out of their money, or to gain access to their bank account and credit card details. This in turn enables the criminal to fraudulently use the victim’s credit card, steal from the victim’s bank account or launder money through it. Spreading computer viruses via infected websites has also become the purpose of a lot of spam so we all need to be really diligent about deleting spam emails.
Finally, the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, is also a much more common way of staying in contact, especially among young people. This increases their exposure to the risk of crimes such as online bullying; it also increases the risk that their computers will be infected by viruses and personal details stolen for malicious reasons. Young people need to be aware of how to protect themselves.
Australia is not generally a source of the organised cyber crime but Australian consumers are certainly exposed to the threat of cyber crime and e-security is something we should all be concerned about. The problem with cyber crime is that it can be carried out with anonymity and from a remote location with a large number of victims in many different countries. This makes it harder to detect and investigate and means that Australia has a strong interest in promoting international cooperation to combat the problem.
It is important that we have a police force adequately trained in computer forensics, and that there is high degree of cooperation between Australian governments and the private sector.
We also need to remember that the internet was not really designed for security, and the overall growth in home computers means there is a much larger number of vulnerable computers linked via the internet. Public awareness is crucial as many end users are not fully aware of the dangers and how to protect themselves and their families from online crime.
[Voice over]: The Committee wants to hear from people and businesses about their experiences with cyber crime including any ideas on how best to combat online threats.
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