Counter Crime Agencies Investigate Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Counter crime agencies in United States (U.S), United Kingdom (U.K) & other European countries have initiated inquiry in to a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults that disrupted sites of Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, VISA & PostFinance & several others. The assaults were launched by hacktivists supporting WikiLeaks in response to suspension of services by these companies to WikiLeaks. While law enforcement agencies in U.K arrested people, counter crime agencies in Netherlands arrested suspects for the alleged assaults. Counter crime agencies in France & France are also inquiring in to the assaults on the sites. Federal Bureau of Inquiry (FBI) has issued over forty search warrants throughout U.S as part of the inquiry. FBI is coordinating with law enforcement authorities of European countries to track down the culprits.

The purpose behind DDoS assaults is to make services of the sites unavailable to their users. The networks are flooded with numerous information requests causing complete disruption of services. The targeted companies had withdrawn their services to WikiLeaks after the latter's controversial disclosure of U.S State Department's diplomatic cables.

Cybercrime incidents are growing at an alarming rate. Timely conviction of offenders is crucial to discourage Net crime. Lack of admissible proof is of the causes, which allows offenders to escape punishment. Therefore, early detection of assault & protection of proof assumes high significance. Lack of awareness makes employees restart or format a computer, leading to destruction of volatile proof. Organizations must encourage IT professional to undertake computer forensics courses for better handling of incidents & initiating appropriate procedures.

A group named Anonymous had claimed responsibility for the assaults. The group is also believed to be behind the recent assaults on Tunisian & Egyptian government sites. Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), a network stress-testing gizmo is reported to have been used for launching DDoS assaults on the targeted sites. of the major challenges faced by investigative authorities is that cybercrime may be initiated from any part of the world & definitions of crime modify across borders. Usually, professionals who have undertaken computer forensic training help organizations tracing the crime trail. In this case, specialists from the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance are helping the investigative agencies in tracing the culprits.

Computer forensics online training, computer forensics courses

Lack of awareness on cybercrime issues & computer forensics among the investigative personnel also hampers the enquiry method. Computer forensics online training may aid counter crime professionals in proactive & early disposal of cybercrime cases.