high tech crime monitoring..

hi all,

i have been thinking about this for couple of days now. thinking about how am i goin to put it here. but here goes...

we all know that internet is used to do a lot of activities both legal and illegal. internet has grown into our lives, gone are the days when one wants to refer to something, one opens books and reference materials. all someone needs to do is google it or any other search engines one is comfortable with.
and we all know that we can buy almost anything under the sun from the internet and heck, have it delivered to our door step.
now in comparisions with our real lives- we have shops, internet has websites.
which is bringing me to the question i want to ask.

there are good (clean) sites and there are bad (those underground) sites, most of them illegal. they come for a couple of months and vanish. some even make replicas of the real sites to get the ids and the passwords to the real sites( some here have witnessed those here)

now coming to the question (finally)

are there any internet cops or police who monitor whats goin on

couple of months ago i had seen this movie "40 days 40 nights" where this girl was working in this porn control thing.

how does one land a job like that "sit down and surf porn sites" and get paid for it.

what i mean to ask is-

1) we know there are organisations out there who are surfing the net and shutting down these illegal sites ( not only the porn sites).
2) are they government run or private organisation. ( after googling about it, found out that its mostly that most countries have a part of police force dedicated to this)
3) what qualification does one need to get into this kind of thing. as this is a security related, i guess that it needs some major security or law course. but which one
4) how do we find out about openings in jobs in such a field. if there are any. i tried searching on the net but couldnt come up with anything concrete.


before i finish let me clear the ambiguity here.
am not searching for something that lets me surf porn sites
am looking for something like "search illegal sites and shut them down "

most of the people here are into security, so they will have some idea what i am trying to ask.

just point me in the right direction and i will search there

cheers

Well you could start by looking at this lot for a UK perspective:

http://www.met.police.uk/computercrime/

http://www.met.police.uk/scd/units/eco_spec_crime.htm

http://www.strathclyde.police.uk/ind...D=625&docID=-1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/2257716.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1283866.stm

http://safety.ngfl.gov.uk/ukonline/document.php3?D=d14

:)

i had come across the metropolitian police site and the bbc story.

but nowhere they give the information about joining this kind of thing.

i couldnot find help on- "if i want to take this up as a career move"

Here in the States there's a few outfits trying to reign in bad guys. Basically what the police do is to try to lure pedophiles into relationships/visits by posing as minors on chat sites. There's a couple of outfits that are manned by volunteers, trying to do the same plus some, similar to what we did here with that todaycnn.com site a few weeks back. The Feds must have a wee bit more goin' on as they are going after spammers, phishers and ass't other cybercrooks (watch the news).

Sadly, fixing the internet's going to come down to some serious content filtering by ISP's, which I have to say I would not be opposed to at this point.

Hi,

Most of the (very few) employees are basically seconded from our various Fraud Squads or Customs & Excise.

It is not well funded, and suffers from the problem that the crime is international, but the laws generally are not.

I would have the thought the most likely route would be Computer Forensics, as they employ civilians in that area just like they do in other areas of forensic science.

:)

Quote:

---

The Feds must have a wee bit more goin' on as they are going after spammers, phishers and ass't other cybercrooks

---

now thats somewhere my interests lie.

for computer forensics, the police has to catch the bad guy first. plus i dont know if there is money in it.

i remember read some news of some russian guy transfering millions of pounds out of UK. they did manage to catch him. what i mean is that if i have to transfer that huge amount of money out, i would do it in a way that it doesnt get noticed. its their job(the bad guys) to ensure that the money gets transfered.
someone must be sitting somewhere to say "the money got transfered, go get him"

or if you have a "big website" and someone breaks into it and defaces it or takes some sensetive material. you would go to some person or organisation to report and they take it up to trace them and catch them.

there is this thread goin here from "Soda_Popinsky" about "bob kema"

isnt there some organisation which hunts for these kinds of acts. people were fooled into something and lost a major amount of their savings and the bad guys are roaming free.

there has to be something somewhere. protecting big sites. bigger the site more the moolah. but the why would they hire someone whos new into it. they will go for experienced people.

these "experienced people" who are they and how do we join them?

Here is a link to where you can report some illegal stuff:

http://www.iwf.org.uk/

It is a charity and works in around 20 countries.

A lot of stuff is reported by the general public, and by AV and other security companies who find "phone home" sites for phishers. If people lose money then the regular Fraud Squads would be interested, but may not be able to do anything. There is Interpol, however.

Also banks and financial institutions have to report transfers of funds above a certain level and would probably verify strange transactions to Nigeria and the like. Deposits and withdrawals of cash also attract attention.

It really isn't an organised environment so I don't think there is much opportunity for the kind of job you mention.

Pr0n is a difficult one, as there is no international consensus with the possible exception of the kiddie stuff.

The security product vendors have people looking around the net for new threats and intellectual property owners hunt for warez sites and shut them down.

Quote:

---

isnt there some organisation which hunts for these kinds of acts. people were fooled into something and lost a major amount of their savings and the bad guys are roaming free.

---

Not really, if you are victim of crime it is up to you to report it, and it is the responsibility of website owners to secure them.

:)

I already looked into this type of thing. I wanted to do the same thing. The police run these types of operations here in the states. I asked the police department what steps I would need to take to get into the computer crime/forensics department. They told me I would have to start at the bottom of the food chain. I would need to go to police academy, after that I would have to do grunt work for 2 years. Those are the police you see in the street, the ones that do traffic stops, answer domestic violence calls, etc etc... Then after 2 years of that you are promoted to 'detective' and you can choose which feild you want to go into but there needs to be an opening in the computer crime unit. What does this mean? Someone has to leave or quit... So by the time I got a job in the computer crime unit I would be an old man :p...

To get a job in the computer crime unit with the Fed's, they usually require police background, which means you would have to do all those steps anyway...

Yeah, it was a real bummer...

charity.........

its kinda hard to survive doin charity these days (with all thoses taxes) :) (my car expenditure is more than what i spend on myself in a month)

Quote:

---

The security product vendors have people looking around the net for new threats and intellectual property owners hunt for warez sites and shut them down.

---

aha

how about that?

i remember about another link charity


was posted here.

now someone designed the security for them. is it better off the get into that kind of work "making secure web pages"

people are spending thousands to have a good secure site, how about them :p

Quote:

---

Then after 2 years of that you are promoted to 'detective' and you can choose which feild you want to go into but there needs to be an opening in the computer crime unit. What does this mean? Someone has to leave or quit... So by the time I got a job in the computer crime unit I would be an old man

---

i guess that would be same here in uk
couldnt we knock someone out to reach there early :D being in the police, that would be kinda hard, isnt it

Quote:

---

To get a job in the computer crime unit with the Fed's, they usually require police background, which means you would have to do all those steps anyway...

---

yeah, these kind of jobs dont come into the open market. they always take the inside man

bagggi I should have thought of this earlier:

http://www.tsi.org.uk/

Over here the Trading Standards Institute deals with piracy and actually employs "scambuster" investigators.

You will find a link to their recruitment site at the link above.

With all the e-commerce going on, they will be moving more into the net and IT?

:)

this looks like it

Quote:

---

They carry out undercover operations to discover fraud and illegal trade practices. They may prosecute offenders for breaches of consumer law. This will involve them investigating criminal offences and giving evidence in court.

---

bookmarking them. will go through the fine print.

cheers :)

Too bad you don't live in the States, bagggi. Was told by a friend w/ Homeland Security a couple of years back the FBI was hiring guys like us. :cool:

oh, any place is good as long as they speak english there.

dont want to go to a new place and learn a whole new language. not that there is any thing wrong with them. its just that there comes a time when one's brain refuses to register new words into memory.

FBI becomes a little too far fetched for someone just getting into it.

alright....now the topic's opening up

we have this firm here dealing with all this
Americans have FBI dealing there
am sure Austrailians have a body to deal with it too (as they were the ones who shut down kaaza)

Americans like to make a show of it all. they catch someone there, its all in the news
British,Canadians,Europeans, Austrailians catch someone. it is heard once and then it vanishes

But then again like The Duck said they want a police background or atleast a police check.
this is usually done after staying in the country for more than 6 months. obviously they wont give the job without a proper police varification

A lot of stuff vanishes here, too...

Yes, different countries have different bodies handling stuff. The problem is they don't seem to communicate with eachother as much as they ought to.

Our Trading Standards Inspectors are effectively civil servants and work alongside our police and Revenue and Customs (British version of the IRS).

I would think that they would be the easiest route into the field, as you won't have to do the PC Plod bit first.

You could then use the experience to get into the police as a civilian technician or into private industry.

I think that the reason there is more fuss in the US is that a lot more of these areas come under criminal law?

i hope that they will tell me if i need to do any course and where to do it from.

AFAIK there are actually Trading Standards courses and qualifications. I know that they run courses for the commercial sector, as well as local government and their own people so that should not be a problem :)

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by nihil
Here is a link to where you can report some illegal stuff:

http://www.iwf.org.uk/

---

While I agree with their motives, when I looked at their website I was informed that they were responsible for "211 potentialy illegal newsgroups supressed from UK ISP networks". If these newsgroups were only potentially illegal, why did they get shut down. That sounds too much along the lines of "we didn't think they should be talking about that kind of thing, so we shut them down' for my liking. While I agree that some things really need to be shut down, I believe that it should be determined to be illegal before they are forced down. These guys talk about things being shut down for being "potentialy illegal" for my liking.

Quote:

---

If these newsgroups were only potentially illegal, why did they get shut down.

---

From the way the organisation works I would have thought because the ISP/Host determined that its TOS/AUP was being violated. All the IWF do is report stuff.

I would guess they were file swapping and warez sites?

nihil

have sent tsi an application, asking for more datails. will let you know how it turned out
:)

cheers

The job here in the USA also requires psychological evals every six months. If you want the job just to be able to surf for porn, that would disqualify you immediately. You need proper training. Anyone that tells you it is not addicting is either naive or lying and usually is deeply involved already. I have watched "clean" individuals become fully addicted in less than a week. Their behaviors change along with their thought processes.

I have seen lives ruined of law enforcement individuals just because they were exposed to the various aspect of porn through their jobs. These were professional individuals, well trained. Noone is immune from the insidious effects of pornography.

With that said, choose your course of action AND be aware of the consequences.

its not the porn i am interested in....i have more than enough. i usually keep all that in one 80 gb external hard disk. its ok for a while. then one gets tired of using your hand as a companion all the time.

i prefer "flesh"

anyway.....one should keep his fantasies and real lives seperate. you cant have your darkest desirest rule your lives.

this is work, the kind, one makes money in.