International organized crime groups, lured by the prospect of thefts that can net hundreds of millions of dollars, increasingly are turning to cybercrime, said the new head of the Justice Department's criminal division.Leslie Caldwell, who took over the position in June, said she plans to make combating online crime a priority, but acknowledged that the growing threats could be difficult to fight.
"Organized crime is very capable of adapting and evolving, and, frankly, cybercrime is a relatively low-risk proposition for a lot of organized criminals and it can be extraordinarily lucrative," Ms. Caldwell said in an interview Friday.
Among the tools those groups are using are so-called botnets -- networks of hijacked computers used to steal information, attack other systems or spew out spam. The Justice Department struck a blow against a major botnet this spring, when it shut down a network infected with malicious software known as Gameover Zeus. At the time, prosecutors said the network had been used to steal at least $100 million.
"If you can do something like that . . . why would you bother setting up a major international narcotics trafficking organization? The chances of success are high, the chances of capture are lower and the sentences are not as long if you do get caught," said Ms. Caldwell, who is slated to testify about the botnet threat Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee.
Research by security firm Sophos Ltd. highlights what the department is up against. Already, hackers are distributing a variant of the Gameover Zeus program in spam messages, part of an apparent effort to resurrect the old botnet, according a Sophos researcher.
Ms. Caldwell is the Justice Department's first permanent criminal division chief in more than a year. In the 1990s, she prosecuted white-collar and gang cases and later led the task force that handled prosecutions in the aftermath of the Enron collapse before entering private law practice 10 years ago.
Since then, she said, the types of cases being brought by the criminal division and the tactics used by prosecutors have changed -- forcing them to learn new techniques, such as how to use data from cellular phone towers and gain access to encrypted email.
"I've seen a very dramatic change in the kind of cases that cyber issues arise in," she said. "All evidence now, other than witnesses, in every fraud case is primarily electronic evidence."
Ms. Caldwell said the department needs more resources to deal with the international aspects of cyber cases.