A great 30-minute Podcast on "Cyber 101"

The law enforcement intelligence and crime analysis blog and podcasts from Dave Henderson and Nick Selby offer a deep insight into Cyber Crime and actions against it. Dave and Nick offer many interesting interviews on this subject matter and we are happy to highlight one of these here: Cyber 101.


In the 30-minute podcast Rik Ferguson of the security vendor "Trend Micro" talks about the threats facing everyday internet users. The podcast gives a great overview with some basic information on the internet like the existing terminology: What actually are viruses, worms, rootkits and trojans.

Download this exciting and very informative podcast here. 

Rik continues the discussion with overviews on malware aimed at creating fame for the author in the past and now-a-days more and more driven by criminals interested in making money from it. Cyber-crime is the big topic coming to mind at this point.

Rik begins the podcast with some statistics and then goes into some very interesting talks about how cyber-criminals actually commit crime.

Listen to the Podcast now: click here.


Here are some excerpts of high-level points made:

• Criminals target user machines to harvest information and to use the machines as distribution points for spam, malware and files or to launch attacks upon other computers.
• Criminals will capture machines and then rent those captured machines to other criminals to commit further crimes.
• It’s very common that those infected don’t notice – Criminals have a vested interest in making sure that you don’t notice the infection, therefore they are careful not to overload your processor
• In underground forums, US credit card details are sold for as little as $2 per card, much less in bulk. To buy a complete identity package – card number and CV2, expiry date, mother’s maiden name etc – can be as little as $10. A million email addresses sell for as little as $8.
• Targeted online information such as geolocation is used to make more valuable spam lists.
• Listen to the Podcast to find out about the typical malicious infection process.
• Cyber-criminal rewards are very high. For example criminal gangs from Eastern Europe sold fake security software making over US $180 million in just 12 months.
• In contrast the cyber-crime risks are low. The chances of getting caught are slim, and if caught, punishments are very light.
• Consider very carefully every piece of information you share online. Cyber Security is a very important topic now-a-days.

We would like to thank Nick and Dave for allowing us access to this great podcast.
Access the Cyber 101 Podcast here.


Cooperation: Police-Led Intelligence