Reuters: The FBI Plans to Aggressively Crack Down on Cyber Crime Over the Next Few Weeks

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

</div><p>In an article that was published yesterday by Reuters: </p>

May 14 (Reuters) – The FBI is getting more aggressive in pursuing cyber criminals and expects to announce searches, indictments and multiple arrests over the next several weeks, the agency’s official in charge of combating cyber crime said on Wednesday.

Quoting an FBI’s Robert Anderson words from Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington:

“There is a philosophy change. If you are going to attack Americans, we are going to hold you accountable,”

“If we can reach out and touch you, we are going to reach out and touch you.”

Anderson said the FBI would show from now on “a much more offensive side” to its cyber program, which he took over in March.

As example, he cited the previously unreported indictment of Dimitry Belorrossov as an example of a recent success in the agency’s battle against cyber crime – A Russian national was arrested at an airport in Spain last year and lost an extradition battle after being accused of running a botnet that attacked some 7,000 Americans, a case that Anderson said was relatively small compared to some that are in the FBI’s pipeline.

The rest of the article said:

Anderson said the FBI would not be deterred from pressing charges against suspected cyber criminals who lived in countries that refused to cooperate in extraditing them.

In the past, the agency has avoided naming overseas suspects in cases where they could not be extradited in a bid to avoid embarrassing other nations.

“There’s a lot of countries that will not extradite. That will not stop us from pressing forward and charging those individuals and making it public,” he said.

Anderson said more criminal hackers are going to be arrested under his watch, rather than turned into sources of knowledge about how the underground operates.

But there can be exceptions when it comes to national security priorities, he added.

Most notably, the leader of the LulzSec hacking group, Hector Monsegur, has had his sentencing delayed more than a half-dozen times as he cooperates and helps break into high-value intelligence targets overseas, according to court records.

Anderson declined to say how many such hackers are helping the government in that way.

Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies with strong ties to the intelligence community, estimated that the FBI might work with about a dozen such hackers, more than in previous years.

Anderson declined to comment on the status of the probe into a weeks-long cyber attack on retailer Target Corp (TGT.N) that came to light in Decembe

From what it looks like, it sounds like the new man in charge of the cyber crime in the FBI has some plans for his new position, mostly targeting hackers and carders probably. This year we have already seen DarkNet figures being charged and in the process of being extradited (Also the Freedom Host case)  – So this type of policy is likely to affect the law enforcement operations that are targeting DNM’s as well as far as they will be able to.

Info Source:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/14/cyber-summit-fbi-idUSL1N0O026420140514?irpc=932

Updated: 2014-05-15