India's Sushma Swaraj announced the talks after meeting her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz (right)
India and Pakistan have agreed to resume high-level peace talks which stalled in 2012.
The agreement was announced at a regional conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
Indian
Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said the foreign secretaries of both
countries would meet to set an agenda for meetings on "peace and
security".
Talks are to include Kashmir, the spark for two of the rivals' wars since independence from Britain in 1947.
The region, claimed by both countries in its entirety, has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years.
"The
foreign secretaries of both countries will meet and chart out the
agenda for the meetings," Ms Swaraj told reporters after meeting her
counterpart, Sartaj Aziz.
Pakistan is said to have assured the
Indian side that it is taking steps to expedite the early conclusion of
trials of those accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks of 2009,
the BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Pakistan reports. Narendra Modi has accepted an invitation from Nawaz Sharif to attend a regional summit in Islamabad next year
M Ilyas Khan, BBC News, IslamabadMs
Swaraj's visit came in the aftermath of a dramatic rise - and then a
rather sudden easing - in tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistan wants to discuss Kashmir, claimed
by both countries in its entirety.
India
wants Pakistan to allow greater commercial interaction, liberalise visa
regimes, grant transit rights to traders between Delhi and Kabul, and
stamp out militant groups which it believes Pakistan has fostered to
destabilise Kashmir and Afghanistan.
This is a complex situation, and talks in the past have often broken down, underlining a trust deficit on both sides.
A
measure of success will be if they can draw up a road-map for more
substantive talks in the near future - and then make progress on the
many long-running issues which divide them.
About N6.2 billion was lost to cyber crimes in Nigeria in 2014, according to an official.
Mr
Ibrahim Shazali, an official of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC), Bank Fraud Section, disclosed this in Ilorin on
Tuesday at the ongoing Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC)
workshop for financial journalists.
He said the figure was grossly higher than the N485 million that was lost through the same channels in 2013.
Shazali
identified Point of Sales (PoS), ATMs and mobile banking as the major
avenues where the cyber crimes were being committed.
He, however,
said that while the value of cyber crimes had been growing
exponentially, it was comforting that the value of fraudulent
transactions was less than one per cent of the total transactions.
“This
should not, however, lead to premature sighs of relief as the success
rate of attempted fraudulent transactions rose from a mere three per
cent to 80 per cent in the space of just one year.”
Shamal said
that although banks experienced more external than internal frauds, the
actual loss to internal frauds was always far higher than those of
external frauds.
He said the lack of a well-defined legal
framework for prosecuting cyber crimes and financial frauds had led to
poor success rate in the fight against the crimes.
The EFCC
official said of the 1,461 suspected fraud cases reported in 2014 only
fraudsters in 41 or three per cent of the cases were apprehended.
Shazali
said that it had finally dawned on global financial and business
leaders that cyber crime was not merely a technology issue, but at the
heart of it.
“For the fight against electronic attacks to be
effective, it is necessary to determine where exactly we need to focus
our energies.
“In other words, it is not enough to have the tools to fight the problem, we must also know where and how to use them.
“Cyber crime is especially devastating because many times victims are
completely unaware of the fact that they are being targeted and they do
not only lose money, but also sensitive customer or organisational
data,” he said. (NAN)
ON
October 2 2013, after months of extensive joint federal investigations,
the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht (aka “Dread Pirate Roberts”) for
his role in leading a major online criminal enterprise.
In May, Ulbricht – now 31 years old – was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted
on multiple felony charges in connection with his operation of the Silk
Road website, which had become an anonymous black market for drugs and
other illegal items.
US District Judge Katherine Forrest chose to
impose the harshest sentence she could, essentially equating him with a
mafia boss in hopes of sending a message to other would-be cyber
criminals. As she said during sentencing:
The stated purpose [of
the Silk Road] was to be beyond the law. In the world you created over
time, democracy didn’t exist. You were captain of the ship, the Dread
Pirate Roberts. You made your own laws. What you did with Silk Road was
terribly destructive to our social fabric.
Ulbricht represents the
changing face of organised crime. His sentence – considered unduly
harsh by some – uncovers the reality that leaders of criminal
organisations may no longer resemble a character from The Sopranos.
Sophisticated
criminal activity has migrated to virtual worlds in which one young man
with a laptop and an internet connection can facilitate an illicit
global enterprise, as my research into the sociocultural aspects of
cybercrime shows.
So what was the Silk Road and how did it begin to change the face of organised crime as we know it? The Silk Road story
Ulbricht
created the virtual Silk Road in early 2011 as an underground service
through which buyers and sellers could anonymously trade illicit goods
using the virtual currency bitcoin.
It relied on the Tor Network –
originally developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory to protect
online government communications – to shield its users from prying eyes.
Silk Road was not the only illegal marketplace operating on Tor at the
time, but it certainly dominated the “cryptomarket” landscape.
The
Silk Road operated for two years before law enforcement shut the site
down. While it ran, more than 24,000 items – mostly drugs – were sold.
This generated US$1.2 million in sales per month, about $90,000 of which
went to Ulbricht and his associates.
Ulbricht, far from the
stereotypical image of an organised crime mob boss, has been described
by friends and family as “modest, humble and caring.” His defence team
called him an idealist.
However, his criminal actions led to seven
charges, including multiple counts of conspiracy to launder money and
controlled substances, engagement in a continuing criminal enterprise
(the so-called “kingpin” charge) and conspiring with others to traffic
in fraudulent identification documents.
A jury convicted Ulbricht
in February, and he was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison
without the possibility of parole – a sentence designed by Judge Forrest
to warn those engaging in illegal activity on the Tor Network of the
consequences.
The government may have developed Tor, but the criminal underworld has managed to exploit it.Source:Supplied
Tor’s shroud of anonymity
The
Tor Network (originally an acronym for “The Onion Router”) is a corner
of the internet accessible with free software downloadable from the Tor
Project.
Websites hosted on Tor (which use the .onion domain
instead of .com) cannot be found or accessed by “regular” internet
browsers like Google Chrome or internet Explorer. Users need to log on
to the Tor Network to access any .onion sites.
The Tor Network,
which became more publicly accessible in 2010, is currently funded by a
wide variety of public and private sponsors including the National
Science Foundation (NSF) and Reddit. Tor keeps users’ identities
untraceable and unidentifiable by “distributing your transactions over
several places on the internet, so no single point can link you to your
destination.”
The Tor Project, the non-profit organisation that
maintains Tor, argues the benefits for its 2.5 million users include the
protection of children, safety of journalists and safe whistleblowing.
But
criminals can also enjoy the cloak of anonymity that Tor provides,
buying and selling illegal items on Tor’s “hidden services” with little
fear of being identified and caught by law enforcement.
Since the
virtual Silk Road was shut down, numerous other criminally concerning
marketplaces have been launched to fill the void. More than 45 such
marketplaces are currently known to exist that trade in illegal goods
and services, up from a handful when Ulbricht founded the Silk Road.
A look at Silk Road 2.0’s wares and world view.Source:Supplied
Drugs, explosives and passports
Vendors
on the Silk Road and other virtual marketplaces use Tor to market and
sell anything from illegal drugs and explosives to forged passports and
pornography.
To purchase one of their illicit wares, buyers simply
create an account, select an item and quantity, and pay using bitcoin.
The purchased items are then shipped to the buyer via snail-mail (unless
it’s a digital product that is immediately downloadable).
Some
sellers even offer “stealth” shipping methods for an additional fee –
these are extra steps taken by the seller to protect the package from
law enforcement detection while in transit.
In the market for a rocket launcher?Source:Supplied
Uranium?Source:Supplied
NSA contact list?Source:Supplied
Law enforcement’s approach
With
so many virtual marketplaces operating using Tor, law enforcement
officials have had their hands full trying to distinguish high-level
cyber criminals like Ulbricht from low-level, infrequent retail
customers.
US law enforcement officials use a range of tactics to
investigate crimes on Tor’s hidden services, and they have an arsenal of
federal statutes – like RICO – to apply to high-level criminals once
identified.
With Ulbricht, the feds turned to the continuing
criminal enterprise (CCE) statue, which is intended to target high-level
criminals in existing organisations who engage in “significant criminal
activity.”
The punishment for engaging in a CCE ranges from a
mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life behind bars – the
presiding judge decides how long. Such a harsh sentence is meant to
disrupt the criminal enterprise itself (“removing the head of the
snake”) and to deter future individuals from engaging in similar
activities.
But will Ulbricht’s life sentence deter future
would-be marketplace operators from launching such a cryptomarket on Tor
or becoming a customer of one? It hasn’t appeared so.
New sites continuously pop up, ready to take their place following arrests, seizure of servers and marketplace shutdowns.
While
this may not work as a specific deterrent, it may serve an effective
law enforcement approach nonetheless to combat serious crime on Tor
cryptomarkets.
Arrests of leaders in large criminal organisations
generally inflict a temporary disruption in business as the
organisations scramble to replace the arrested members. And the
investigations also result in the removal of tens of thousands of
kilograms of illegal drugs per year from the streets, identify hundreds
of human trafficking victims, and recover stolen property and data.
Prosecutions such as Ulbricht’s have also resulted in the seizure of assets totalling millions of dollars. The changing face of organised crime
In
the end, Ulbricht’s case signals how much the face of organised crime
has changed and how our understanding of it must evolve as well.
When
asked to describe what an “organised crime” syndicate looks like, what
springs to mind? Maybe an urban underworld boss like James Joseph
“Whitey” Bulger Jr, a drug kingpin like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera –
the former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel who just escaped from prison
for a second time – or perhaps just a scene from The Sopranos.
What
most of us probably don’t think about is a tech-savvy 20-something from
Austin, Texas, with a graduate degree in education from Pennsylvania
State University. Yet the court decided that Ulbricht met the
requirements for the CCE charges.
He was convicted of running a
criminal enterprise (legally considered to be any group of six or more
people) that generated substantial income from a continuing series of
illicit activities. For all intents and purposes, he was found guilty of
acting as the “boss” of an organised crime group – one that catered to a
global market.
Ulbricht’s international presence via cyberspace
was perhaps even more impressive than the influence of a traditional
mafia boss or kingpin, who, without cyberspace, is tied to physical,
geographic realities.
This perhaps signifies a cyber-driven
evolution in how we view “organised crime.” Cyberspace makes it easier
for criminal groups to operate from the comfort of home, and the Tor
Network, in particular, provides added security to set up virtual
illegal businesses anonymously.
The challenge for law enforcement
in devising a solution to this problem will only continue to grow,
particularly as people increasingly turn to the internet to purchase
their drugs.
This article originally appeared on The Conversation, read the original article here.
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Cybercrime, University of Alabama
Disclosure statement
Diana S Dolliver does not work for, consult, own shares
in or receive funding from any company or organization that would
benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations
beyond the academic appointment above. The Conversation is funded by the National
Research Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Barclays Africa. The Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation is a Strategic Partner.
Republish this article
We believe in the free flow of information. We use a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives licence, so you can republish our articles for free, online or in print.
On October 2 2013, after months of extensive joint federal investigations, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht (aka “Dread Pirate Roberts") for his role in leading a major online criminal enterprise.
In May, Ulbricht – now 31 years old – was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted
on multiple felony charges in connection with his operation of the Silk
Road website, which had become an anonymous black market for drugs and
other illegal items.
US District Judge Katherine Forrest chose to impose the harshest
sentence she could, essentially equating him with a mafia boss in hopes
of sending a message to other would-be cyber criminals. As she said
during sentencing:
The stated purpose [of the Silk Road] was to be beyond
the law. In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist. You
were captain of the ship, the Dread Pirate Roberts. You made your own
laws. What you did with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social
fabric.
Ulbricht represents the changing face of organized crime. His
sentence – considered unduly harsh by some – uncovers the reality that
leaders of criminal organizations may no longer resemble a character
from The Sopranos.
Sophisticated criminal activity has migrated to virtual worlds in
which one young man with a laptop and an internet connection can
facilitate an illicit global enterprise, as my research into the
sociocultural aspects of cybercrime shows.
So what was the Silk Road and how did it begin to change the face of organized crime as we know it?
The Silk Road story
Ulbricht created the virtual Silk Road in early 2011 as an
underground service through which buyers and sellers could anonymously
trade illicit goods using the virtual currency bitcoin.
It relied on the Tor Network – originally developed by the US Naval
Research Laboratory to protect online government communications – to
shield its users from prying eyes. Silk Road was not the only illegal
marketplace operating on Tor at the time, but it certainly dominated the “cryptomarket” landscape.
The Silk Road operated for two years before law enforcement shut the site down. While it ran, more than 24,000 items – mostly drugs – were sold. This generated US$1.2 million in sales per month, about $90,000 of which went to Ulbricht and his associates.
Ulbricht, far from the stereotypical image of an organized crime mob boss, has been described by friends and family as “modest, humble and caring.” His defense team called him an idealist.
However, his criminal actions led to seven charges, including
multiple counts of conspiracy to launder money and controlled
substances, engagement in a continuing criminal enterprise (the
so-called “kingpin” charge) and conspiring with others to traffic in
fraudulent identification documents.
A jury convicted
Ulbricht in February, and he was ordered to spend the rest of his life
in prison without the possibility of parole – a sentence designed by
Judge Forrest to warn those engaging in illegal activity on the Tor
Network of the consequences. The government may have developed Tor, but the criminal underworld has managed to exploit it.Screenshot
Tor’s shroud of anonymity
The Tor Network (originally an acronym for “The Onion Router”) is a
corner of the internet accessible with free software downloadable from
the Tor Project.
Websites hosted on Tor (which use the .onion domain instead of .com)
cannot be found or accessed by “regular” internet browsers like Google
Chrome or Internet Explorer. Users need to log on to the Tor Network to
access any .onion sites.
The Tor Network, which became more publicly accessible in 2010, is currently funded by a wide variety of public and private sponsors including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Reddit. Tor keeps users’ identities untraceable
and unidentifiable by “distributing your transactions over several
places on the internet, so no single point can link you to your
destination.”
The Tor Project, the nonprofit organization that maintains Tor, argues the benefits for its 2.5 million users include the protection of children, safety of journalists and safe whistle-blowing.
But criminals can also enjoy the cloak of anonymity that Tor
provides, buying and selling illegal items on Tor’s “hidden services”
with little fear of being identified and caught by law enforcement.
Since the virtual Silk Road was shut down, numerous other criminally concerning marketplaces have been launched to fill the void. More than 45 such marketplaces are currently known to exist that trade in illegal goods and services, up from a handful when Ulbricht founded the Silk Road. A look at Silk Road 2.0’s wares and world view.Silk Road 2.0, Author provided
Drugs, explosives and passports
Vendors on the Silk Road and other virtual marketplaces use Tor to market and sell anything from illegal drugs and explosives to forged passports and pornography.
To purchase one of their illicit wares, buyers simply create an account, select an item and quantity, and pay using bitcoin. The purchased items are then shipped to the buyer via snail-mail (unless it’s a digital product that is immediately downloadable).
Some sellers even offer “stealth” shipping methods for an additional fee – these are extra steps taken by the seller to protect the package from law enforcement detection while in transit. In the market for a rocket launcher?Evolution,Uranium?Evolution, 2014, Author providedNSA contact list?Evolution, 2014, Author provided
Law enforcement’s approach
With so many virtual marketplaces operating using Tor, law enforcement officials have had their hands full trying to distinguish high-level cyber criminals like Ulbricht from low-level, infrequent retail customers.
US law enforcement officials use a range of tactics to investigate crimes on Tor’s hidden services, and they have an arsenal of federal statutes – like RICO – to apply to high-level criminals once identified.
With Ulbricht, the feds turned to the continuing criminal enterprise (CCE) statue, which is intended to target high-level criminals in existing organizations who engage in “significant criminal activity.”
The punishment for engaging in a CCE ranges from a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life behind bars – the presiding judge decides how long. Such a harsh sentence is meant to disrupt the criminal enterprise itself (“removing the head of the snake”) and to deter future individuals from engaging in similar activities.
But will Ulbricht’s life sentence deter future would-be marketplace operators from launching such a cryptomarket on Tor or becoming a customer of one? It hasn’t appeared so.
New sites continuously pop up, ready to take their place following arrests, seizure of servers and marketplace shutdowns.
While this may not work as a specific deterrent, it may serve an effective law enforcement approach nonetheless to combat serious crime on Tor cryptomarkets.
Arrests of leaders in large criminal organizations generally inflict a temporary disruption in business as the organizations scramble to replace the arrested members. And the investigations also result in the removal of tens of thousands of kilograms of illegal drugs per year from the streets, identify hundreds of human trafficking victims, and recover stolen property and data.
Prosecutions such as Ulbricht’s have also resulted in the seizure of assets totaling millions of dollars.
The changing face of organized crime
In the end, Ulbricht’s case signals how much the face of organized crime has changed and how our understanding of it must evolve as well.
When asked to describe what an “organized crime” syndicate looks like, what springs to mind? Maybe an urban underworld boss like James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger Jr, a drug kingpin like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera – the former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel who just escaped from prison for a second time – or perhaps just a scene from The Sopranos.
What most of us probably don’t think about is a tech-savvy 20-something from Austin, Texas, with a graduate degree in education from Pennsylvania State University. Yet the court decided that Ulbricht met the requirements for the CCE charges.
He was convicted of running a criminal enterprise (legally considered to be any group of six or more people) that generated substantial income from a continuing series of illicit activities. For all intents and purposes, he was found guilty of acting as the “boss” of an organized crime group – one that catered to a global market.
Ulbricht’s international presence via cyberspace was perhaps even more impressive than the influence of a traditional mafia boss or kingpin, who, without cyberspace, is tied to physical, geographic realities.
This perhaps signifies a cyber-driven evolution in how we view “organized crime.” Cyberspace makes it easier for criminal groups to operate from the comfort of home, and the Tor Network, in particular, provides added security to set up virtual illegal businesses anonymously.
The challenge for law enforcement in devising a solution to this problem will only continue to grow, particularly as people increasingly turn to the internet to purchase their drugs.
