By Bernhard Warner
London - Organised crime syndicates have stepped up their presence on the Internet, operating extortion rackets, child pornography rings and elaborate financial scams, Britain's top cyber cop told reporters.
And the most vulnerable target is the individual Web user, said Detective Chief Superintendent Len Hynds, head of the United Kingdom's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU).
"Organised crime is turning to the weakest element in the chain, which is the people. It's the hands on the keyboard on either end of the transaction that is the actual weak point," Hynds said.
'Organised crime is turning to the weakest element in the chain' The crime syndicates, he said, are based in every corner of the globe. Investigations have led the NHTCU repeatedly to Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, Russia and Latvia.
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The groups have honed their Internet skills as a greater flow of business is conducted online.
"Organised crime in all its guises is extremely flexible. It does spot the new and lucrative opportunity," Hynds said.
In the NHTCU's two-year existence, the 55-person task force has made nearly 110 arrests for such age-old crimes as blackmail and extortion to decidedly hi-tech computer hacking cases.
Law enforcement officials throughout the world suspect crime rings are recruiting technically savvy programmers to concoct fraud schemes against banks and businesses.
An increasingly common scam hitting financial institutions is known as "website spoofing" in which a fraudster sets up a bogus online business that closely resembles a bank or business website.
The aim is to lure unsuspecting Internet users to the phoney site in an effort to get them to submit their credit card and bank details. The NHTCU said 40 UK businesses have been hit by the spoofing scam so far this year, up from seven a year ago.
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