From the category archives:

Musings on Future Crimes

Spoofing Life: Reality Altering Technology Enables Crime

August 31, 2010
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As we come to rely more and more upon technology as a filter for our life experiences, opportunities to bend reality abound.  In theory, none of this is new.   Ask anybody who has ever been on an online dating site and they will tell you what you see is not always what you get.  Yet as technology plays an ever-increasing role as an intermediator for our daily experiences, those who control the technology can control our experiences.  These changes have some significant implications for crime and social disorder in the 21st century. Phishing emails routinely take users to websites that appear to be genuine, but are in fact controlled by organized crime.  Unsuspecting victims enter their personal banking details and are defrauded shortly thereafter.  Pedophiles pretend to be teenagers, creating extensive fake online profiles in order to lurk in chat-rooms popular with young adults and to contact them.  The [...]

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When Flash Mobs Become Crime Mobs

March 26, 2010
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When people think of flash mobs, they tend to focus on the positive: 300 people showing up to dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in a London tube station,  a relatively calm Worldwide Pillow Fight Day or even an impromptu Sound of Music performance in Antwerp’s (Belgium) central rail station. Yet as the below article demonstrates, love, dance and pillow fights are not always the goals of flash mobs and increasingly the underlying technology is being used for criminal purposes. As noted elsewhere on Future Crimes, criminals are using a variety of social media to include Twitter, Facebook and simple SMS messages to coordinate their nefarious activities.  Though the flash mob originated as a playful social experiment in spontaneity and often featured more positive themes such as hugging, kissing or dancing, as the case from Philadelphia show us, the same underlying communications technology can also be abused. In some of the [...]

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When Computers See: Crime and Policing Implications

March 24, 2010
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Ah, remember the good old days of searching the Internet…the days when you had to type your search request into a search engine text box?  So quaint…so 2009.  Now, thanks to Google Goggles, it is possible for your mobile phone’s camera to take a picture of an object and use that image itself to search Google. Have you seen van Gogh’s The Starry Night while visiting New York’s Museum of Modern Art? Just snap a picture with your Android mobile phone and using Google Goggles the picture will be submitted to Google who will recognize the real painting and return an array of search data on it.  Standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and want to know more?  No problem, just snap a shot and Google will identify the Paris icon and tell you all about it. Of course Google Goggles does not just work on famous objects.  Discovered [...]

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Haitian Earthquake Disaster, SMS/Text Message Donations and Cyber Criminals: A Perfect Combination

January 15, 2010
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As the world responds with kindness and compassion to the devastating 7.0 earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, fraudsters and cyber criminals are quick at work to take advantage of the situation.  In addition to the traditional forms of despicable profiteering that occur surrounding many natural disasters, new technologies for emergency philanthropy and disaster assistance are creating novel opportunities for fraud. Text-to-give campaigns have gone viral in the past few days allowing people around the globe to donate small amounts of money via their cell phone bills.  The largest such campaign has been run by the American Red Cross, which has allowed people to donate $10 by sending an SMS message with the word “Haiti” in it to phone number: 90999. This new method of charitable donation has exploded in use since the earthquake struck and according to the American Red Cross has been responsible for 5 million [...]

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Stolen Android Phone Sends Victim Picture of Thief

December 24, 2009
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According to the below television news report, police in Wilsonville, Oregon arrested a neighborhood burglar after he used the Motorola Droid mobile phone he had stolen to take a picture of himself on an Android phone.  What the thief did not know is that the phone had a mobile ap on it known as “Lookout.”  The legitimate owner of the phone had configured his Lookout program to automatically synch all of his photographs from his mobile phone to the Lookout website. When the foolish burglar took a picture of himself (one he presumed was only being stored locally), it was unknowingly uploaded to the Lookout site when the application preformed its nightly backup service at midnight.  It was there that the legitimate mobile phone owner discovered a picture had been uploaded of an individual whom he did not recognize.  The burglarly victim then notified the police who were able to [...]

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Human Tragedy: Potent Vector for Malware Transmission

June 1, 2009
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The Case of the Air France Crash As the story below demonstrates, any item that generates a lot of international news headlines is likely to be exploited by global criminal networks.  Whether it is the unexpected death of Michael Jackson or a tragic tsunami, earthquake or volcano, scammers are using the public’s interest as a weapon to commit cyber crime and fraud. According to SC Magazine, another recent example, involved the suspected crash and disapearance of Air France flight 447 on May 31, 2009 while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.  As expected, spammers and malware writers tried to cash in on the Air France disaster. Spammers began falsely promising news on the Air France crash as a way of tricking recipients into opening messages promoting Canadian pharmacy products. Junk mailers even began pushing a new campaign that included subject headings such as “Last seconds of plane” or [...]

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