F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen calls for establishment of ‘Internetpol’

F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen calls for the establishment of ‘Internetpol’ to tackle organized crime on the Web.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – October 16, 2008 -- F-Secure’s quarterly security wrap-up highlights the challenge of bringing cyber criminals to justice by examining several high profile cases which have been in the news recently.

Jeremy Jaynes, a prolific spammer in the United States, has had his conviction overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court following a ruling that the state Anti-Spam Law violated the First Amendment to the Constitution concerning the right to free and anonymous speech. In New Zealand, a teenage author of banking Trojans which earned millions of dollars for a criminal gang, walked free from a court despite pleading guilty. Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office in Washington, United States, and Microsoft Corporation have announced that they are filing lawsuits against the purveyors of rogue security applications attempting to scare Internet users into buying worthless products.

As the courts and law enforcement struggle to stem the mounting Internet crime wave, Mikko Hypponen F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer says,”The Internet has no borders and online crime is almost always international, yet local police authorities often have limited resources for investigations. We should consider the creation of an online version of Interpol – ‘Internetpol’ – that is specifically tasked with targeting and investigating the top of the crimeware food chain.”Other topics in the quarterly wrap-up include phishers attacking consumers using the international banking crisis as a ruse, a spamming campaign that uses the U.S. presidential election as a way of spreading malware, and the return of the malicious attachment in infecting computers.The full third quarter 2008 security wrap-up is available at http://www.f-secure.com/2008