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computers can be used as weapons more and more people have become victims of cyber crime. has it was an absolute disaster you just don't do things like that to people. a new generation of criminals is making money over the internet a lot of money. but if it just boomed one month you'd have one hundred orders and the next one thousand. private sector companies infrastructure systems and government institutions have all been hacked. good news for sure we'll be here oh boy malicious forces. you know. the feeling of fear of such attacks has created a multi-billion dollar industry but what do we know about these cyber security companies.

germany's digital technology association says that over the past year about half of all germans were victims of computer crime often it's only a few euros sometimes it's a lot more. resident oshie choi and was targeted by cyber criminals after she signed up at an internet dating portal. once. i know i met a guy and things seemed to be going well it was like being on a date i was really happy when he wrote back that he felt the same way about me he'd ask how i was and what i had for breakfast no one does that mean real life must give the guy not. the friendship of sorts blossomed between you she and her

new suitor a man whom she only knew through phone calls and photographs here identified himself as fred girard dennis a gemstone dealer from berlin then then it's claimed that his daughter who was studying in the us had been robbed and could not afford to travel back to germany for christmas. dinners didn't have the money to pay for the take it so he asked me to transfer funds from her bank account to his. bin as he kept on boarding maybe a phone calls for up to twenty one hours a day on his story really tugged at my heartstrings i almost cried. it preyed on my conscience it was close to christmas so i finally broke down and sent him the money to get. that constitution more than one thousand euros later the police also invested. dated her for alleged money laundering. she has

been ripped off by cyber scammers. men often from african countries freya found vulnerable women they use fake photographs and other materials to pass themselves off as attractive singles from europe they use digital messages and phone calls to try to get their victims to hand over money in this case the crooks even used she's bank account to deposit funds they'd stolen from others that's what got her into trouble with the police. she even thought about killing herself. mario is a psychologist and cyber crime profiler based on the university she's been doing research on why people continue to fall for these kinds of scams. they have finally found someone. they can develop a relationship with someone thinking trust the offender off for

a month will be very good at reading that kind of trust so all the victims actually even if they identify that this is a scam they will never not necessarily lose their trust in. the financial losses are often compounded by emotional distress it may be easy for some to ridicule those who transfer thousands of euros from their bank account to a perfect stranger but cyber crime is by no means confined to men and women who are simply looking for companionship criminals also target businesses. take the norm back based firm leoni for instance in august twenty sixth seen a scam cost the company forty million euros a senior executive at one of the firms subsidiaries in romania transfer the money after she got an e-mail from someone claiming to be one of the company's top german executives. human factor is the

weakest link however we see that cyber crime or crime online is becoming more sophisticated more organized criminals use techniques social engineering techniques in order to persuade people to open up an email or provide information and. so i think that the layman users is really not going to solve the problem. what are these social engineering techniques and why do they work so well. a computer is only as secure as the person who operates it social engineers take advantage of this situation for example they sometimes portray themselves as i t support staff and offer to help solve

a computer problem all the user has to do is download some software but that software often contains mold where that allows the crooks to take over the computer . criminals also use phishing emails for example they contact online banking customers and ask them to authenticate their bank account details otherwise the account will be blocked those who provide this information are turning their accounts over to crooks. these scammers try to scare their victims and that's the key element of this kind of social engineering create conditions that frighten computer users and then exploit that fear. or they can play on simple human curiosity for example they might drop a u.s.b. stick that's filled with move where in a company parking lot and hope that an employee will pick a. up and use it about half the time it works.

no company wants to become the victim of a million dollar cyber attack that's why corporations including tousen club are hiring experts who can develop and maintain an internal cyber defense system. people like alpha barry in spring twenty sixteen he and his team suddenly found themselves trying to fight off a cyber attack they had to react quickly and effectively. to has the attack played out. we came to the conclusion that a group of individuals was behind it. and that they probably had a criminal intent and. it was an industrial strength hacking operation some of they used professional software tools they developed some of the software

themselves and bought some of it on the black market. it was like being attacked by a small criminal organization. when tony would not be known to use it's. good to simply experts feared that the hackers were trying to steal corporate talk humans including research and strategy papers and construction plans those documents would fetch a high price on the black market. another possibility the hapless could be working directly for to some clips competitors or even foreign governments trying to secure a strategic advantage in important or sensitive industries. the experts from the to sink local computer emergency response team worked overtime to get the situation under control. in the end even some external service providers they managed to clear the malware from the company's computer system but they were not able to.

track down the perpetrators. these complex targeted attacks known as advanced persistent threats or a p.t.s. are becoming more sophisticated and more common. alpha very is convinced that every german company is a potential target. just as we're now in a period of transition where people are willing to discuss these problems open lines with his. company experts are exchanging detailed information on various kinds of attacks and how they can protect themselves against those and to provide an effective defense we have to have the latest information on the attackers and their methods the vic some. part of that process includes a detailed analysis of previous attacks because many hacking operations follow a pattern.

these patterns include brute force attacks in which hackers try to crack a computer users password they simply track through vast quantities of character combinations until they find the right one that's why experts advise people to use passwords that are as complex as possible. another method involves using a digital bomb to automatically infect computers that are using outdated software some kinds of worms contain mall where that locks up the computer and orders the user to pay money to unlock it this sort of malware is known as ransomware. it's nothing short of digital blackmail experts advice computer users to keep their anti. virus software up to date to prevent such attacks.

or a distributed denial of service attacks are also very popular among computer criminals a dos attack is an attempt to paralyze a computer network by flooding it with user traffic the perpetrators often employ large numbers of computers that they've infected with malware. another kind of attack can involve the use of webcams and smart home appliances like refrigerators . these are called bot net attacks. and the motives of computer criminals who carry out these attacks are just as diverse as the methods they use. there are different motives behind a different actually criminal groups so there could be

a monetary gain financial gain political already just beliefs so people want to make a statement against government against the country there could be actually emotional reactions. or even sexual impulses showing off my skills to my peers. one person who made a name for himself by demonstrating his happiness skills was an iraqi born british student mustafa. in twenty eleven he and several members of a group known as lulz security broke into the computer systems of several high profile companies and organizations but they didn't do it for money they did it to show that they knew more about digital security than a lot of highly paid specialists. they also wanted some corporations to become more transparent about their act.

she wore advanced things like hiking into females actually to databases to reveal truths or wrongdoing made by corporations or companies so as to mean i was kind of like an interesting way to make a change because if if you suspect that some some corporation of property is corrupt and there are the most powerful thing you can do is to reveal truths because people make decisions based on facts and truths and in a world where people are being complaining about fake news. ror truths can be hard to find. groups targets included the websites of the cia be u.s. senate and sony pictures they even took over the home page of the british tabloid the sun and posted a fake news report that the paper's owner rupert murdoch had just died of a drug overdose. this called attention to the fact that

a group of technologically savvy young people could break into just about any website they wanted. some says they wanted to demonstrate that a lot of companies don't pay enough attention to cybersecurity. the most common misconception about cybercrime is that it's complicated or it's like it's easy if you need a little skill to do it anyone can do so and you have. this many. fools freely available but you can download should you have people at work more educated about how these attacks work and a lot of the fears were in general that i see a lot of the fear and misconception i also see around here again because we would use. albert sound who was just sixteen at the time was arrested and pleaded guilty. to charges of computer misuse he was given

a suspended sentence of twenty months in jail today he's working on a doctorate degree in computer security. and the threat posed by cyber criminals is complex they have a wide variety of motives and methods what are the german authorities doing to crack down on them. we're in the german state of has a at the central office for fighting cyber crime. public prosecutors usually are and. are working hard to get a grip on the situation. opossum to get we deal with a wide variety of digital crime just as police do in real life for example child pornography or the sale of weapons on the dot net. these are crimes that you

wouldn't necessarily need a computer for but today they're taking place on the dark net for me at. the dark net is an unregulated and mostly anonymous part of the internet. was one of the first germans to sell illegal drugs on a platform known as silk road pflum sold cocaine and ecstasy and didn't worry much about getting caught. it was for all fear for the good it was too it was like a gold rush. you felt like the cops would never find you. we simply weren't on your thirty's radar like cept maybe americans. to figure out what was going on pretty early but the germans didn't might until may twenty third also it was in the uk. the silk road became a road to riches had custom. from all over the world and he provided them with high

quality drugs. in fact he was one of the most popular dealers on the site as indicated by customer ratings. profits from drug deals made flan wealthy he could now afford luxury cars and caribbean vacation it's . good for you wanted some economics for a liver so i was fairly close to the sources. trees and direct reports of sort of wood i was pretty much the only person between the producers and the consumers. that would give them it it's a consequence i bypassed the whole distribution chain. i sold stuff by the gram but hundreds of grams a day just this way and this could only have happened on the internet otherwise you'd have to deal with all sorts of middlemen but i was able to sell directly to my customers just a little just so and for and so bring on this wave of skiing in internet a farmer. but the author were already closing in. had become careless

he made deliveries in person to some clients one of them was working undercover for the police flom was arrested and later sentenced to seven years in prison. believes that it's much more difficult these days for criminals to operate on the dark net his unit has managed to shut down a major child pornography ring and to identify the seller of a weapon that was used in a mass shooting in munich in twenty sixteen. but office says that it's usually good old fashioned police work that bring cyber criminals to justice. and if i didn't. get one it's simply not true that we investigators hacking into computer systems i want to make that absolutely clear. that the technical options that we have been investigating

a dark night crime are straightforward. we don't hack into systems and we don't hunt around there for suspects. we use traditional investigative methods including undercover operations for these. cyber crooks who encrypt their communications and don't deliver their products in person make it difficult for investigators to track them down but perhaps an ever greater cause for concern is the fact that digital technology can be used as a weapon in acts of sabotage terrorism. in twenty ten security experts discovered that a malicious computer worm called stuxnet had infected several hundred thousand computers around the world most of them in iran. the worm interfered with the

operations of centrifuges in the natanz enrichment plant in iran one thousand centrifuges were affected fifteen to thirty percent of iran's enrichment capacity most experts suspect that the u.s. was behind the attack although some say it may also have been israel. in december twenty fifth teen western ukraine was hit by a power failure hundreds of thousands of people were affected in what turned out to be the first successful hacker attack on a power grid the attackers managed to break into the grids network system and then just before christmas they disconnected several substations the result blackout. russia was widely believed to have organized the attack. in spring twenty seventeen a ransomware crypto worm called one a cry spread around the world it targeted windows computer systems that were still

using outdated security protection users had to pay money to unblocked their. computers europe and the u.k. were hard hit hospitals and automobile factories were forced to shut down the national german rail system was also affected total damage estimates range from several hundred million euros to about four billion but those responsible for the attacks didn't make a lot of money from their blackmail efforts only about one hundred thirty thousand dollars. in march twenty eighth the german government was hit by a powerful cyber attack. the attack targeted a number of german ministries. and since this story broke yesterday everyone wants

to know whether any data was stolen. german investigators quickly identified the perpetrators as an elite group of russian hackers known as snake. they managed to operate under attack did for months in the government's administrative system. the threat posed by such attacks is very real. digital technology experts in israel know this all too well their country is surrounded by enemies including the state of iran jihadist groups in the palestinian territories and hezbollah in southern lebanon. israelis must not only live with the danger of military attacks but also cyber attacks. journalist and author ronen bergman says that israel was the first country to recognize that in today's interconnected world the internet not only provides the

benefit of improved communication but can also be a threat to national security that's why israel has developed a sophisticated side. security system that includes the military business and research groups. and there are at least the sense the mindset of constant war goes to the threat a liberal democracy in the middle east that faces extreme threats and therefore use it stream measures to counter that this is not the mindset in other countries and when this is the mindset that drives people to the edge can do a lot inventing a lot in being very innovative in order to counter the threats and this is also the basis of israeli success in so. many israeli students are preparing for a career in unit a two hundred b. agency that's responsible for code decryption and collecting signals intelligence

it's an option that for many is preferable to doing their mandatory military service in for example the occupied territories. the eight two hundred. military intelligence m d the the intelligence community all the mother and father start of nation there wouldn't be. such a hive in the ground fertile ground for the growing of these huge huge arena of startups and acknowledge investment a breakthrough without the existence of israeli intelligence. the city of beersheba located in the negev desert is one of israel's key high tech centers. the advanced technologies park located on the outskirts of the city was founded in twenty thirteen and has been expanding ever since. the park is

a magnet for israeli computer experts and their colleagues from around the world. five thousand personnel from unit eight two hundred are due to move to beersheba soon plus even more private sector computer security experts. the idea is to create a huge cybersecurity complex that will prepare israel for the future. it's a joint project that will combine the efforts of the israeli military plus the science and business community. is the director of the cyber security research center at ben gurion university l. of it says that this synergistic approach will help israel to defend itself against cyber attacks. we have a list naive about what can be done. because of what.

is there or others cyber state activists do and eventually or the cup abilities that state up towards this eventually are leaking to the cyber crime so we have an advantage that we know in advance what is so broken those are going to use it seem to you it's. private sector businesses are also interested in these developments that's why elevates created telecom innovation laboratories a joint venture between ben gurion university and orchard telecom and european companies know that they can benefit from israeli technology. many companies from europe are coming to try to buy good technologies into the security many from startup companies or. several technologies from different sources of the companies and they are using them either to protect their oath to sell it to other

companies inside germany and in europe. germany is now adopting some of the innovations developed by the israelis. for military complex even though in the past cooperation among the military educational institutions and the private sector has been rare. in twenty seventeen the federal interior ministry created cetus a new central office for security sector information technology. much of the headquarters building is still under construction but soon several hundred people will be working here as the federal criminal police and the federal office for the protection of the constitution develop new ways to fight crime. bill carle is the president of this new organization carl says the israeli approach of bringing together large numbers of experts from different sectors is

a good one. can't just. i don't think that we can copy exactly what israel and other countries are doing but i think we're in a good position. that's the key to success in those countries is to bring experts from industry universities and various institutions together. that's exactly what we're trying to do here. along with the private sector the bundeswehr university and the cyber defense research institute but it was it with reporters from the two forces institute cyber different. but some critics say that seat has needs to be more transparent about the kinds of research and development projects that will be carried out here. the agency's mission is to provide technical assistance in fighting crime and in hansing national security but it's not clear for example what sorts of methods sita smyth use to help prevent terrorist attacks

we'll learn more about that once the agency is fully operational. right now bill fleet carle is more concerned about finding enough people to fill the need jobs. desperately for floyd austin and bush took the shortage of qualified experts in mathematics information technology and communications engineering which is a real problem for both the federal government and the private sector. we have about thirty employees right now and plan to hire about twenty mom. sick. for the whole. c.t.'s also employs attorneys and administrative experts but it's clear that right now the agency simply doesn't have enough personnel to launch complex research and development projects like corresponding agencies in israel have done. this indicates that germany

has a lot of catching up to do in israel cyber security is a key element of government policy. israeli experts are capable of dealing with just about any high tech threat. cyber crimes in the classical to solving crimes during the by private criminals organized crime is but something. it's as much as this is a prime concern in other countries it's a much lesser concern in israel the infrastructure. cyber security is one of today's most important international growth markets as israel has shown but there aren't many german companies to be found among the world leaders in this sector.

this is the london office of dark trace the world leader in the use of artificial intelligence technology to provide cyber security. emily is one of the company's co-founders dartrey simple is nearly seven hundred people many of them are former government security experts. early days what's useful as well is. the expertise of people from government intelligence backgrounds who knew what it was like can actually when we look back and the experts in cyber security worked in the private sector they were in the public sector they were people that were. dealing with national security team defense and offensive projects so it's important for us to work with those people because they have a lot of insight and help just develop that product in the first face in a way that it would be useful for the security industry. they don't trace advisory

board includes a former director general of m i five britain's domestic counter intelligence and security agency and a former chief information officer for the u.s. central intelligence agency the company services are definitely in demand right now . absolutely a growing business and we are seeing investment increase across the board as it should and governments taking this more and more serious. we see many countries that's out there right now our national security sent is. very positive. a number of private sector businesses are also actively investing in i.t. infrastructure and to do that they often turn to foreign companies to some clips says there's a good reason for this. german companies are simply not offering the sort of innovative cyber security solutions that make sense for us. today those solutions are often provided by startups in the

u.s. or israel or. germany has been slow to develop a national computer security strategy and there are a few examples of technology made in germany in the booming private cybersecurity sector. and then there's the shortage of qualified personnel experts in computer security have their choice of employers worldwide. vo to work it takes quite a while to recruit specialists to fill bacon positions. of course we're competing with a lot of other companies that it's a tight market and germany simply doesn't have enough cyber security experts to meet the demand. let's take a look at the size and scope of the international cyber security market. experts predict that the global economic damage caused by cyber crime is expected

to reach six trillion dollars a year by twenty twenty one that's good news for the cyber security industry. ninety three billion dollars will be spent on computer security in twenty eighteen and that amount is set to increase. one study shows that some countries. including the u.s. australia and israel spent a lot more per capita on computer security than germany. still seventy one percent of german companies plan to boost their cyber security measures. the number of cyber security jobs is expected to grow to six million by twenty nineteen . but by twenty twenty one three and a half million of these positions will likely still be open top level i.t. experts don't have much trouble finding

a job and corporations will be competing for their services. cloudy. is a cyber security researcher and he used to work in the industry himself. he knows that many who start out in the sector are offered six figure salaries and first class trips to international conferences. but eri says that these new employees often don't have the capacity to evaluate the ethical and moral consequences that their jobs involve. developing technology towards a direction that is not respectful or of people's individual rights and it is not designed and built with the best interests of individual people at mind a lot of technology a lot of technology has developed into it with interest over enterprises than the interest of big corporations an institution's like mind and often that is done of

the price of the ability of each and every one of us agency over the technology that we use and have the ability of using dictums technology in the best possible way for ourselves that's what fundamentally worries me the most. computer security policy is not much different from traditional security policy the freedom of the individual must be weighed against possible security threats. in israel a company called celebrate works with law enforcement agencies worldwide to fight crime celebrate breaks into digital devices to search for potential evidence. the technical term for this is digital forensics celebrate has offices around the world that has sold sixty thousand software licenses in one hundred fifty countries the company specialty is cracking the encryption systems of mobile phones.

c.e.o. yossi carmel says this technology has become a key element of many police investigations. is what celebrities do for to help the police catch the bad guy is very simple at the but the bottom line it goes to that element when it comes to child exploitation when it comes to children program graffiti when it comes to gang homicide terror border all those elements you need to use data digital data in a smart way in order to protect our society and that's for me the main key those who will not do it will live a huge relative huge disadvantage along the road. celebrates technology makes it easy for investigators to access data stored on mobile phones lists of phone numbers records of calls made text messages and photos. the off ortiz can analyze geo location information and even retrieve material that's been deleted by the user

. german police use this technology while they investigated the twenty sixteen rape and murder of a nineteen year old female student. the suspect was hussein cover an immigrant from iran. the crime took place in the city of fribourg. police analyze data on i phone. and were able to track his movements on the night of the attack. they were able to place the suspect at the riverbank where the murder occurred. at the start of his trial confess to the crime the court later sentenced him to life in prison. digital technology had helped to put a violent killer behind bars. in twenty seventeen celebrate was hit by a cyber attack some of the data that was stolen and later published indicates that

the company software is being used in turkey russia and saudi arabia countries that have been accused of serious human rights violations. could celebrate software being misused as a surveillance tool. carmel denies it. we are selling. very focused in terms to sell and in some of the countries we are selling only to some dedicated customers that we invent and verify. that the knowledge of sell a bright. that the quality which is used by the law enforcement in order to make it so for someone it is. not some that we always imagine automatically bad regimes and the technology goes in the wrong way here. in turkey and in russia and in other places on earth there is also gang criminality and there is also child exploitation

and there is also homicide. but in theory this software could be used for example by offshore tarion regimes to spy on journalists. celebrate technology has a wide variety of applications but some experts warn that it must be used sensibly to protect the privacy rights of individuals. who will take a lot of time too actually. what walks through all of the different things in which the industry and technical people and security people are participating too and finding ways to make sure that those do not go out of control and the kings for example of. the future all of these companies are sort of technology users is a good example because it was something that was sort of like people knew. used to you know build surveillance technology offensive technology and so. we didn't quite

. know we didn't know who or what and to whom they were working with they were working with exactly and to find and help. putting in motion a number of changes if. i am that puts pressure on companies like celebrate and we still don't know enough about these firms and who their customers are it's a billion dollar business and ethics issues often take a backseat to profits. when it comes to cyber crime and cyber security there's a fine line between good and evil. but cyber crime presents a clear and present danger. the technology that's being used to combat this threat offers new opportunities but it also brings new responsibilities including protecting the rights of individuals. so far germany has failed to keep up with

these technological developments. public debate is urgently needed on the complex issues of cyber crime and cyber security. and without any colleagues. is that possible scientists are going into the sea researching the future of agriculture strips of wild flowers we could replace pesticides useful plans for. the fertilizers can a balance between high on diversity be found to morrow to thirty minute double. chopin for the twenty first century.

any interest on offer and unique interpretation. a tesla in concert and the world of a young piano she in their. hearts twenty one presents johnny in a tree for nothing chopin. in sixty minutes on d w. every journey begins with the first step and every language with the first word published in the book. is in germany to learn german why not come with him it's simple online on your mobile and free to sapps court t w e learning course nico speak german made easy. here's what's coming up on us so closely so much movement to. get this thing

mentioned his whole life was six months ago what all that means for the table of course. among his legal every weekend here on t w. in the united states a congressional committee has issued a subpoena demanding to see a complete report into possible collusion between president trump and russian agents during the twenty sixteen presidential campaign committee chairman jerry nadler said he could not accept the current redacted document which he said quote leaves most of congress in the dark. in northern ireland the people of londonderry have been remembering a twenty nine year old woman who was shot dead during an overnight right.