Microsoft for joint action on cyber crime

A senior official from US software giant Microsoft appealed on June 11 that for the private and public sectors to link arms to effectively fight a surge in cyber crime.
Speaking at a Council of Europe conference, Tim Cranton said the number of virus-infected computers in the world has been rising, reaching 63,000 a day in the second half of last year - up 11 percent from a year earlier.
Damage resulting from cybercrime in 2006 was in the region of 200 billion euros, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet fraud complaint centre, he added.
Cranton, a senior attorney at Microsoft and director of its Internet safety enforcement programmes, said that bots were being used to trigger replicating virus attacks on computer networks.
Bots are software applications, which run automated tasks over the Internet, and a computer infected and compromised with a malicious bot is known as a zombie. "The threat of zombies or bots has become more prevalent since 2005, primarily because cyber-criminals are able to hide behind their anonymity," Cranton said.
He added: "Combating these threats will take a multi-faceted approach - legally, technically and by educating consumers. "But we can't do it alone. The industry is partnering together with governments and law enforcement in the fight against cyber crime."
Christian Aghroum, who spearheads efforts against technology-related crimes at the French Interior Ministry in Paris, noted that unwanted email could transmit hard-to-detect Trojan viruses, often as picture attachments. Ninety percent of e-mails today are considered to be spam, a Council of Europe document noted.
Aghroum also called into question the honesty of some online auction houses, saying that "if you find a car at 10 percent of its price, it's either been stolen or a phantom". He proposed the establishment of a European school of technology that would be linked to data security.
The Council of Europe's convention on cyber crime is the only such binding treaty in the world today, serving as a guideline for nations that want to develop their own similar laws. Forty-three nations have signed the convention and 19 have ratified it.
Present at Monday's conference in Strasbourg were representatives of South Africa, the Philippines, Brazil and Egypt who said their nations would reform their national laws on the basis of the convention.