International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 89

International Journal on Criminology
As an example, let’s look at one of the Russian-Ukrainian cyber-gangs, one
among many in the ex-Eastern bloc, as described at the end of 2014 by Group-IB and
Fox IT. Calling itself “Carberp” after the “Trojan Horse” software of the same name, and
starting in early 2013, this cyber-gang infiltrated its targets’ systems by way of malwarelaced
e-mails that appeared to come from so-called trusted partners (the Russian
Central Bank and others), and then proceeded to plunder the targets’ bank accounts.
Now it also preys on the systems themselves, which are heavy and inert, myopic, and
even blind; it also attacks the computers in ATM devices.
Since its creation, “Carberp” has plundered fifty banks and ATMs in Eastern
Europe, looting 25 million dollars. Since summer 2014 the gang has become even
bolder, attacking businesses and banks in Western Europe and the US, thanks to a
new “malware” package called “Anunak,” which brings together a dozen tools used to
steal passwords, break codes, enable remote cyber-theft, and more. Finally, “Carberp”
practices criminal insider trading by stealing sensitive information relating to the
targeted companies, so as to exploit it on various financial markets and stock exchanges,
as well as in other ways.
Silent and invisible, great wild beasts like “Carberp” prowl a cyber-jungle where
humans have so far struggled to deal with them. There is a bright future ahead for
cybercrime. And what can mere technology do when faced with such beasts? Not a lot.
We saw this recently when pirates ravaged the digital systems of the television channel
TV5Monde, with all of the channel’s anti-piracy IT staff entirely unable to see or do
anything.
Confronted with this cybercrime, still barely understood, and now capable
of striking whenever it pleases, as it pleases, cyber-criminology must prevail. A new
criminology, one dedicated to mobility. A cyber-criminology forsaking the stable
and the fixed in favor of fluxes and networks. A cyber-criminology of movement and
motion, at ease swimming in Bauman’s famous “liquid modernity.” A cyber-criminology
dedicated to understanding better, learning more about, and facing up to the emergent
cyber-dangers—and alone capable of doing so.
Cyber-Criminology: What Does it Mean, and What Can it Do?
The objective of cyber-criminology is to tell us what criminals do in the cyberworld;
here are its four foundational theses:
• Diagnosis 1: In the compound term “cybercrime,” “crime” is dominant. Analyzing
the world of cybercrime reveals that it has not invented anything new. In their own
milieu, up to the present, cybercriminals have merely reproduced variants of physical
criminality.
• Diagnosis 2: Cybercrime will not decline as a result of yet more advanced technology,
but only through political will. An all-guns-blazing-style, headlong charge would
provoke, in this domain, a disaster analogous to that of the inept high-tech war in Iraq.
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