SOCA has been created as a result of the merger of the UK’s National Crime Squad, National Criminal Intelligence Agency, the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), and experts from HM Revenue and Customs and the UK immigration service.

The agency will employ over 4,000 people and its annual budget will be in the region of GBP400 million, with around 10% of this being allocated for private sector fraud, which includes identity fraud and online crimes.

The incorporation of the NHTCU into SOCA means that the billions of pounds UK businesses lose annually to computer crime will now be addressed by SOCA. During its five-year existence, the NHTCU itself has achieved some notable successes. For example, in 2005 two men were sentenced to a total of 10 years’ imprisonment for their part in an identity theft scam, from which it is estimated they made over GBP6 million. The criminals were tracked down by the NHTCU as a result of its investigation into an eastern European phishing gang that was targeting UK banking customers.

The NHTCU was also responsible for identifying a suspected ringleader of an eastern European gang that was using denial of service (DoS) attacks to blackmail UK betting websites. It was estimated that in excess of GBP1 million had been laundered over a three-month period, and the NHTCU passed on the contact details of the suspected ringleader to Russian law enforcement agencies.

Earlier this year, the UK government reported that identity theft alone is costing the UK a massive GBP1.7 billion annually, equivalent to GBP35 per adult – a significant amount of money in anyone’s books, representing costs associated with identity fraud such as the time and effort expended by financial institutions in dealing with the problem. The UK’s Home Office said that in excess of 100,000 people are affected by identity theft in the UK every year.

Further extending the brief of those at SOCA responsible for cyber crime, during the past 12 months there has been a massive increase in the use of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) in order to extort money from businesses during peak trading periods. During a DDoS attack the flood of incoming messages to the target system essentially forces it to shut down, denying service to legitimate users, and loss of trade to the organization that is being attacked. Identity and financial theft using phishing and pharming techniques is also on the rise, and spyware distribution is reaching epidemic proportions.

SOCA will have its work cut out tackling cyber crime, and it will be interesting to review its progress in 12 months’ time.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)