Cryptography at the service of organized crime - a challenge for science and practice
In: Međunarodni problemi: International problems, Band 75, Heft 4, S. 667-684
ISSN: 0025-8555
Organized crime represents a serious threat to the security, economy, and
sometimes for the legal order of the country. Criminal groups not only use
the achievements of information and communication technologies (iCT) for the
expansion of the organization, communication and management of activities
and resources, but also invest, through secret and illegal channels, to
develop their own applications of their own applications that they will use
for their activities. Organized criminal groups themselves, the most
powerful ones, have their iCT experts whose goal is not only to protect
communication channels, but also to devise new ways of ?circumventing? and
neutralizing police measures and techniques for detecting and monitoring
their activities. Members of organized criminal groups to use those
communication applications that enable encrypted transmission to electronic
devices using the necessary operating system, enabling the installation of
the application and the establishment of a connection to the internet in
order to enable the necessary protected communication. There are also
applications that allow the entire device to be encrypted, making it
difficult to find its contents or discover the necessary information and
evidence. This paper presents the characteristics of organized crime and
their operating modes, with an emphasis on the use of cryptographic
techniques. Case studies are illustrating the size and scope of abuse of
encryption by organized criminal groups, by data on cases which were
processed, as well as challenges in opposing the abuse of cryptography from
a technical-technological and legal aspect, after that we provided guideline
for improving the mechanisms for reduction of organized crime.