Surrey, B.C., resident arrested as part of global cybercrime investigation
RCMP in B.C. announced Wednesday that a Surrey resident has been arrested as part of a global cybersecurity crackdown.
Police say the person they arrested operated a network of thousands of infected computers capable of delivering malware — malicious software which could steal personal data or mine cryptocurrency.
It's part of a global crackdown on cybercriminals, led by the European Union's police agency Europol, called "Operation Endgame."
The operation saw multiple arrests in partnership with Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and the U.S.
While RCMP have released little information about the B.C. arrest, a cybersecurity expert says the recent crackdown comes after a significant operation last May that saw the bust of a large cybercrime ring, which had compromised hundreds of thousands of computers.
"The [individual] that was arrested here in B.C. appears to have been a customer purchasing access to those compromised computers, and to me that's important," said Chester Wisniewski, the director and field chief information security officer for Vancouver-based company Sophos.
Wisniewski said that, historically, law enforcement tends to go after the kingpins at the top of cybercrime operations and not lower-level criminals who do not organize operations.
"This arrest here in B.C. in particular ... kind of sends a message to the customers that you're not off the hook either," the cybersecurity expert told CBC News.
Chester Wisniewski from cybersecurity company Sophos said that the arrest announced Wednesday likely sent a ripple of fear through cybercrime ecosystems. (CBC)
Europol said in a statement that it tracked down those who paid to get into the compromised computers, which were used for webcam access, deploying ransomware and mining cryptocurrency.
Wisniewski said that it was the first major cybercrime operation that he had heard of in B.C in a long time.
"We have to increase the friction to make these crimes more difficult," he said. "And certainly, wondering if the police are going to knock on the door at any moment is a good deterrent."
The cybersecurity expert said that cybercrime has increasingly been broken down into a marketplace, where some hackers gain access to computers and then other hackers buy those computers to install malware.
"Very few people have the technical skills to do an attack from the very beginning and write their own viruses and malware for computers and carry it all the way on through to the money laundering at the end," he said.
"It requires a chain of criminals working together in order to conduct these large-scale attacks that cause so much damage."
The B.C. government, B.C. Libraries Co-operative, First Nations Health Authority and retailer London Drugs were among the organizations that suffered cyberattacks last year in the province.
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Jesse James and his brother, Frank, along with six other members of their gang, attempted a bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota on Sept. 7, 1876. It was a messy affair, with four men killed during the ensuing gun battle, including two members of the gang. It was a lot of blood spilled for a total take of about $25 in nickels. Now on the run, the group split up a few days later but still managed to evade capture. Trying to make their way back to their home state of Missouri, the brothers made stops near Luverne, Minnesota on Sept. 17 of that year and entered what was then Dakota Territory about five miles north of Valley Springs later that evening, a timeline that suggests the James brothers were never near Devil's Gulch. "It's known they were 12 miles north of present-day Luverne in the evening. They were in Dakota Territory, (but) in all likelihood they traveled as fast and steadily as they could over that ground, and they would have missed it altogether," Fanebust said. 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Maybe, just maybe, the romance of history has a legitimate place in this outlaw narrative alongside plain, dull facts."
