The FBI is TRYING to Stem Cyber Badguyness

There is no easy answer, but I can tell you for sure that the FBI has been applying more and more resources to cybecrime every year.

Just this month they unsealed seven indictments charging 16 people from China, Russia, Iran and Malaysia with hacking crimes.

Treasury sanctioned 45 people associated with Iran and two people from Russia.

At the same time, DHS and the FBI have been flooding us techies with threat advisories.

While this is completely unlikely to stop crime, it does increase the risk for bad guys. I am always amazed when these folks travel to countries friendly to us and get arrested and extradited.

FBI Director Wray said last week at a CISA summit that the FBI’s plan is to increase risk for the bad guys.

They have also been working with companies like Microsoft to take down web servers hosted by the hackers.

But it turns out that none of these recent indictments went after government sponsored hackers. That may be a coincidence or it may be intentional.

In fairness to the FBI, these crimes are hard to solve. It is not like China is going to cooperate with us

Still, we have to acknowledge that the more pressure the FBI and other law enforcement puts on hackers, the better. And, we should not forget, there are a lot of hackers right here in the U.S. Those should be easier to apprehend.

I will say that I would not want their job. It is next to impossible to win. Most hackers think, correctly or not, that the odds of getting caught are very low.

The risk is low – if they remember one thing – one thing that hackers seem to forget regularly. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. If you are too greedy, you will paint a target on your back. And you will increase the odds of getting caught.

Credit: The Record

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