Latest news with #onlinecrime
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Sexting criminals linked to suicide of Aussie teen nabbed in Nigeria in AFP sting
A sinister group of organised criminals who allegedly preyed on young Australian teens, including a 16-year-old boy who suicided, have been nabbed in an international sting targeting online sextortion. Two of the 22 suspects nabbed in Nigeria are linked to the death of the child in NSW in 2023. The AFP worked with the FBI, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to shut down the group allegedly responsible for a wave of sextortion targeting thousands of teenagers globally. The network's scheme, which coerced victims into sharing sexually explicit images before threatening to distribute those images unless payment was made, had devastating consequences. In the United States alone, more than 20 teenage suicides have been linked to sextortion-related cases since 2021. While many victims were based in North America, the ripple effects of the offending extended to Australia and other nations. During the operation, two AFP investigators deployed in Nigeria were able to trace online activity, link digital evidence to suspects, and assist in the identification of both perpetrators and victims. Investigators from the AFP-led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) also provided expert analysis on data seized by foreign law enforcement and supported processes to avoid overlap with local investigations. Their efforts created a measurable result locally – in the 2023–2024 financial year, the ACCCE received a total of 58,503 reports of online child exploitation, including 1554 sextortion-related reports. These figures reflect the growing sophistication and volume of online abuse attempts targeting Australian children. The targeting of Australian children by offenders online remains ongoing however, and the ACCCE continues to receive reports of sextortion from members of the community. AFP Acting Commander Ben Moses, who leads the ACCCE, described the outcome as a powerful example of what could be achieved through international co-operation. 'This global operation sends a clear message to those who exploit children online. Law enforcement is united and determined to find you — no matter where you hide,' Acting Commander Moses said. 'These crimes are calculated and devastating, often pushing vulnerable young people into extreme distress. 'Thanks to the co-ordinated action of our partners, we achieved meaningful results including an immediate and significant reduction in sextortion reports across Australia.' While a reduction in reports is encouraging, the AFP warns the risks to children and young people remain and the community should be vigilant about online safety. The AFP continues to work with state and territory police to support victims of sextortion and other malicious online activity. Victim support includes referrals to specialist mental health services, as well as collaboration with online platforms to have harmful content removed. The AFP and its partners are committed to stopping online child sexual exploitation, and the ACCCE is driving a collaborative national approach to combating child abuse. The ACCCE brings together specialist expertise and skills in a central hub, supporting investigations into online child sexual exploitation and developing prevention strategies focused on creating a safer online environment. The AFP-led ThinkUKnow program has developed the online blackmail and sexual extortion response kit aimed at young people, aged 13 to 17, and is available from the ThinkUKnow and ACCCE websites. The ACCCE has also created a dedicated sextortion help page with resources and information on how to report sextortion.
Sky News
20-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
HSBC 'being attacked all the time' by online criminals - as boss 'kept awake at night' by cyber threat
The boss of one of the UK's biggest banks says it is being attacked "all the time" by online criminals and he is kept up at night by cyber threats. "It does keep me awake," HSBC UK chief executive Ian Stuart told the Treasury Committee of MPs. "Because we can be attacked and we are being attacked all the time." Mr Stuart said banks were spending "enormous" sums of hundreds of millions of pounds on IT systems - the biggest expense in their businesses. "Cybersecurity is now very much at the top of our agenda," he added. Concerns were also highlighted by Lloyds Bank chief executive Charlie Nunn, who said financial fraud will get worse if banks cannot intervene to prevent it and social media and telecoms companies are not incentivised to halt it. Mr Nunn said the UK "has become the home of fraud", adding that the number of victims is "pretty disturbing" and "individual cases are harrowing". Major high street businesses, including M&S and the Co-op, have been hit by cyber attacks in recent weeks and had their operations impacted. 1:21 Cybersecurity threats, however, were not behind the several-day outage at Barclays at the end of January, its UK chief executive Vim Maru said. He added: "We've learned the lessons. We're acting on the lessons, both work done internally, but also with help from third parties as well. Account holders across the UK have suffered a spate of IT glitches from different banks around paydays this year. Tens of millions of pounds on IT have been spent and customer glitches have fallen, Mr Maru said. 4:30 He added that the problem at Barclays was a software issue, saying: "We put a fix in place that means that we won't have a recurrence."
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Online criminals attacking HSBC ‘all the time', says head of UK arm
The boss of HSBC's UK arm has said the bank is 'being attacked all the time' by online criminals, with cybersecurity now its biggest expense, costing the lender hundreds of millions of pounds. Ian Stuart sought to reassure MPs that cybersecurity was 'very much at the top of our agenda', amid growing concerns that other large businesses could fall victim to the kind of attacks that have caused chaos at retailers such as Marks & Spencer and the Co-op. M&S has been struggling for almost a month since its IT systems were targeted over the Easter weekend, with the attack hitting its online operations and leaving some store shelves empty. 'It does worry me … We are being attacked all the time, so the defence mechanisms that you put in are absolutely critical,' Stuart told the House of Commons Treasury committee on Tuesday. That involved 'investing hundreds of millions of pounds', he said. 'This is our biggest expense in business.' 'The amount of money [that] banks, all of us, will be spending on our systems is enormous today – and it has to be. It has to be because our customers rely on digital technology all the time,' Stuart said. The need to keep a bank's systems operating seamlessly – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – has increased since bosses started accelerating the pace of branch closures and pushing more customers into using digital apps and online banking. Stuart said that, at a group level, HSBC alone processed 1,000 payments a second. Meanwhile, the bank was making about 8,000 changes to its IT systems every week. He said no bank would be able to guarantee that its services could stay online all the time. 'So the skill is, how quickly can you recover?' Banks' IT systems have come under increased scrutiny in recent months, with customers at Britain's largest banks and building societies having suffered the equivalent of more than one month's worth of IT failures between January 2023 and February 2025. Those figures did not include the full impact of an outage at Barclays that started at the end of January and affected 56% of online payments during the crucial payday period for many employees. There have been further disruptions at Barclays since then. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Speaking to MPs on Tuesday, the chief executive of Barclays' UK operations, Vim Maru, said the problems had been caused by software made by an external company. 'A software issue was the root cause, and we worked with a third-party provider that provides us with that software. We've learned the lessons around that. We've put a fix in place that means that we won't have a recurrence. And then looking forward, there's a further enhancement that we're making, which is in the middle of implementation,' Maru said. The Barclays boss again apologised to affected customers. 'We're deeply sorry for the disruption that our technical issue on the 31st of January caused for our customers. We've clearly worked very hard to recover from that and make sure that we put the right steps in place,' he said.
RNZ News
16-05-2025
- RNZ News
Timaru man jailed for online sexual exploitation of children
The man was sentenced in the Christchurch District court on Friday. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon WARNING: This story discusses rape and sexual abuse. A 49-year-old Timaru man has been sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for the online sexual exploitation of children. The sentence, which was handed down at the Christchurch District Court on Friday, follows a Customs investigation which began last year. The maximum penalty for the importation or exportation of objectionable publications is 10 years' imprisonment. On 20 August 2024, the defendant arrived at Christchurch International Airport when returning from a holiday overseas. He was spoken to and searched by Customs officers and, as a result, 306 child sexual abuse files were located on his phone. He was arrested and a search warrant carried out at his home address by Customs investigators from the Child Exploitation Operations Team. Another hard drive was located in a drawer, containing at least 173,000 child sexual exploitation material files. Further forensic analysis by Customs specialists from the Electronic Forensic Unit found the man had distributed child sexual abuse files even while on holiday overseas. Customs also charged him for that offending. The man's collection had been curated over a number of years and included at least 33 hours of video of the worst category of material, involving the rape and sexual abuse of hundreds of children from around the world. Chief Customs officer in the child exploitation operations team Simon Peterson said cases like this caused devastating and ongoing harm to child victims. "This offending is horrific. It's crucial to realise these are not just images or videos being censored because they are not good for public consumption. "The proliferation of child sexual abuse material amongst clandestine global online networks has a much more profound effect on the victims themselves, every day. "We continue to work closely with our colleagues at New Zealand Police and the Department of Internal Affairs, as well as our offshore partners, to combat this despicable trade and protect our border and vulnerable children all over the world, from those involved in it." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Forbes
11-05-2025
- Forbes
Dark Web Alert — 2.9 Billion Passwords, 14 Million Credit Cards Stolen
Stolen credit cards and passwords published on dark web. I recently reported how a total of 19 billion compromised passwords had been published online to criminal forums on the dark web and shady corners of the surface web. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those shocking numbers resonated with the public, and the story went viral. Here's the bad news: the numbers are actually worse than initially thought. While 1.4 billion of the original stolen password count were found to be unique, the remainder being repeated common passwords, new research has now revealed that an incredible 2.9 unique compromised passwords are available for purchase or sharing on the dark web, along with an astonishing 14 million stolen credit cards. Here's what you need to know. OK, so I'm taking liberties with the lyrics of Roger Miller's sixties classic, King of the Road, in this sub-heading, but the sentiment is spot on. Threat actors want your passwords to facilitate everything from ransomware to spyware attacks. Recent reports have placed the number of passwords available to cybercriminals on the dark as being in the range of 1.7 billion to the aforementioned 19 billion, although when talking about unique passwords, that drops to 1.4 billion, which is in the same kind of ballpark. The latest threat intelligence analysis, however, suggests those numbers are low. Very low indeed. The Bitsight TRACE Security Research team has suggested that the amount of breach data, including compromised passwords and credit cards, skyrocketed by 43% in 2024 compared to the previous year. The State of the Underground report, found that 20% of all data breach victims were accounted for by U.S. organizations. Which makes the fact that is also identified that there were 2.9 billion totally unique sets of compromised credentials, up from 2.2 billion stolen passwords in the 2023 report, available to threat actors on the dark web. When it comes to stolen credit cards, the numbers are smaller but just as concerning: 14.5 million listed on underground criminal forums, that's up 20% on the previous year. A surge in infostealer activity is partly responsible for the increased number of compromised passwords, Bitsight said. However, when it comes to the stolen credit cards, Bitsight confirmed that the rise was 'exclusively due to a surge in US cards; the number of cards from the rest of the world declined by 1.6 million, but listings of US cards increased by 4.5 million, counting for 80.7% of all compromised card listings in 2024.'
