Seventh edition
Organised crime and cyber crime
Welcome to the seventh edition of the Dark Global Matters.
This month, our focus is on organized crime and cyber crime. We anticipate you will familiarise yourself with how the two vices take shape and operate.
Our correspondent spoke to Dr. Nathaniel Allen, an assistant Professor of Security Studies with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies about cyber crime and its links to organised crime.
Dr. Allen conducts research and manages the Africa Center’s programme on cybersecurity and emerging technology.
What constitutes a cyber crime?
There is some disagreement over what exactly constitutes a cyber crime. On the one hand, in an increasingly digitized world all forms of crime are likely to have at least some kind of “cyber” element, be they because information technology is used as a means of communication by criminals or because a suspicious vehicle implicated in an armed robbery gets tagged by an automated license plate reader. On the other hand, cyber crime is at times defined much more narrowly, as crimes that violate confidentiality, access, and integrity of computer networks, involving malicious software like botnets, trojans, keyloggers, or other forms of malware.
I think it is helpful to distinguish between cybercrime, which is at times defined as crimes that wouldn’t exist without computer networks, and cyber-enabled crimes, which are existing types of crimes and criminal markets that have been altered or turbocharged by computer networks. An example of the former might include denial of service attacks against business and individuals, or crypto jacking, where hackers mine cryptocurrency using resources in systems they don’t own. Examples of the latter include online fraud and extortion relying on techniques such as phishing or the online distribution of child pornography.
What is the link between social media and cyber crime?
The connections between social media and cyber-enabled crimes are almost too numerous to categorize, in part because social media is becoming so fundamental to how many of us interact with the world. If you receive a malicious link through a social media account like telegram or WhatsApp, that’s an example of social media facilitating cyber crime. That malicious link could be used for any number of criminal purposes, from identity theft to ransomware. There are also numerous ways social media is used to facilitate crime – by identifying potential victims through personal information or imagery in photos they might post online, by enabling communications between criminals and criminal networks through encrypted messaging apps like telegram or signal, or by enabling the buying and selling of illicit goods through online marketplaces.
What role has social media played in facilitating illicit trade?
The spread of social media platforms and their integration into online marketplaces is easing communication and facilitating exchange between buyers and sellers of illicit goods of all kinds, from ivory in Eastern Africa to stolen motor vehicles in West Africa to human trafficking across the continent. As a result, illicit trading networks across Africa are becoming more integrated and globalized. In some cases, such as the markets for small arms or drugs, illicit goods manufactured outside of Africa are becoming more easily accessible to African citizens, through Facebook or other more secure messaging apps.
In other cases, such as wildlife crime, illicit goods stolen from Africa are being investigated with the help of online platforms like Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. A 2017 study by the International Fund for Animal Welfare identified dozens of illegal wildlife marketplaces across major social media platforms across seven African countries, including Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Côte D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya. They identified nearly 10,000 different animal species worth nearly USD 6 million.
How has social media endangered individual lives and put them at risk of crime?
Though individuals shouldn’t be discouraged from engaging with social media, it is important that they be clear-eyed about the risks. Personal information that is placed in social media profiles can be stolen or used in identity theft. Geographic or location-based information might help criminal groups target individuals they are, for whatever reason, interested in. Individuals should be very wary of clicking on links sent by social media by people they don’t know or sources they do not trust, because often those links are used to hack into people’s devices, which could result in anything from granting attackers the ability to use your phone’s camera microphone without your permission to compromising an individual’s mobile money or financial account. To project yourself, use two-factor authentication, biometric identification, and strong passwords.
Social media has been a key player in facilitating the ease of global communication and e-commerce, with this there has been an increase of crime too. How can this be mitigated?
There are a lot of things that need to be done to mitigate the role that social media has in facilitating crime. For one, governments need to adopt regulations that categorize, codify, and deter cyber and cyber-enabled crime. It can be really challenging to stay ahead, because the threat landscape is already evolving, but a crucial first step lies in defining the scope and scale of the problem, There are some countries in Africa who don’t have basic cybercrime legislation on the books, or who have cybercrime legislation that is so vague that it may cause more problems than it solves.
Along with legislation needs to come cyber capacity building efforts to enable law enforcers to use things like digital forensic evidence in order to investigate, and ultimately prosecute, cyber-enabled crime.
One of the biggest challenges lies in global cooperation. Cybercrime is a problem that spans borders and countries. In a world where, for example, cybercriminals in West Africa can target citizens and organizations in West Africa as part of business email compromise or phishing scams, it’s not possible for one country acting alone to secure itself. So cooperation through things like mutual legal assistance, treaties, and intelligence sharing is really important.
Finally, I think technology companies have a responsibility to ensure that their platforms aren’t being abused, and ought to work to shut down groups or platforms that are being used for illicit activities like human trafficking.
How should social media companies fight these crimes without infringing on individual rights?
So I think we have to be a little more specific about what we mean by “crime” here. I don’t think that social media companies are at all infringing on individual rights if they refuse to let their platforms be used for things like human trafficking, child pornography, or the flow of other illicit goods.
It gets trickier when you get into questions of whether social media companies should limit certain kinds of speech or enable their platforms to be used as means of state surveillance of non-violent protest groups or political opposition movements. For the latter, I think the answer is unequivocally no. For the former, I’d encourage you to check out and quote liberally from the following article I co-wrote:
Deluge of Digital Repression Threatens African Security – Africa Center for Strategic Studies
What is the link between organised crime and cyber crime?
According to the United Nations, organized crime consists of any group of three or more persons that for an extended period of time seek to commit a crime punishable by at least four years incarceration in order to obtain financial benefit. So there’s a linkage any time these groups commit cyber crimes or cyber-enabled crimes. In fact, organized cyber criminal networks that use ransomware, business email compromise, or romance scams to commit fraud are among the world’s most rapidly growing criminal enterprises. Many of these groups operate in Africa or have targeted African citizens.