Most of the time I am content with the retired FBI life but there are times and events that make me miss my former role. Recently, the FBI announced that it had worked with domain registrars and services to take down a large number of sites being used to home COVID scams. (See Here) These successes make me proud of my FBI friends and co-workers and highlights a very important role that the FBI has in the fight against COVID scams and cyber crime in general. I am often asked questions like”How effective is the FBI against cyber crime?” or “How often do cyber criminals get prosecuted? or, my all time favorite, why should i contact the FBI when I am a victim of cyber crime?” Whenever these questions come up, I talk about the dedication and hard work exhibited by the FBI, not just inside the United States but in foreign countries as well. Especially with regards to cyber crime, FBI legal attaches around the world work with local law enforcement to identify and prosecute cyber criminals. One of my anecdotal stories starts with, “How many of you read newspapers in Lithuania?” (I always had a fascination with the Baltic states and I like how Lithuania rolls off the tongue). This questions is always answered with negative responses. I then recount how so much of the cyber battlefield is outside the borders of the United States and the FBI often identifies cyber crime infrastructure that operates on foreign soil. We work with those local authorities to shut down this infrastructure and, when possible, identify who owns the system and were they aware of the criminal acts being committed. Many times, they are not but the infrastructure of the criminal enterprise is still disrupted.
I will say this. There is often some frustration within the FBI in the prosecution of the cyber war. Sometimes, foreign law enforcement doesn’t move as fast as we would like or we would like to do more investigation on these foreign machines, but this is a cross that must be borne. Cyber crime in many countries is a way of life and many law enforcement agencies are just not equipped for cyber investigations. This is even true inside the United States as many local law enforcement agencies do not have even rudimentary computer forensics training. This leads to another fundamental offering of the FBI: Training. For years, law enforcement agencies around the world have looked to the FBI as a training resource and the National Academy trains hundreds of law enforcement officers from around the world on new and emerging threats. Twenty years ago when I was trained as a forensics specialist, our Evidence Response Units at Quantico were often engaged in training local and foreign law enforcement officers in the basics of crime scene forensics. Now many of these same agencies have dedicated forensics personnel and are no longer in need of the FBI’s training. This is where computer forensics and cyber crime investigations are today. Every year, the FBI sends experienced forensics personnel all over the world to teach these skills to law enforcement agencies in the hope that ten years from now, they too will have dedicated computer forensics personnel and they will be able to aid in the international fight against cyber crime. Every year, these international law enforcement partners become better at investigating and prosecuting cyber crime and while many of these criminals may never be brought to the United States for prosecution, the hope is that they will be brought to justice by their own justice system.