06/03/2015

Over 50 Arrested In Connection With Cyber Crimes

Over 50 people have been arrested in connection with a range of cyber offences.

In total, 57 people were arrested in 25 separate incidents.

Operational activity took place across England, Scotland and Wales and saw officers deployed from the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), Metropolitan Police and Regional Organised Crime Unit's (ROCUs) associated with local forces around the UK.

Ten Regional Organised Crime Units, Police Scotland and Police Service of Northern Ireland visited approximately 60 businesses, with personalised security data reports, identifying 5,531 compromises on servers within the UK. The compromises could be used to send out spam email, launch attacks against websites or servers, or install phishing websites to gain access to sensitive information.

The NCA estimates that organisations acting on this advice could, between them, clean up to half of the phishing attacks that typically originate from the UK each month.

Andy Archibald, Deputy Director of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, said: "The 56 arrests around the country this week are a result of the essential partnership activity with law enforcement, industry and government that is at the heart of fighting cybercrime.

"Criminals need to realise that committing crime online will not make them anonymous to law enforcement. We are continuously working to track down and apprehend those seeking to utilise computers for criminal ends, and to disrupt the technical networks and infrastructures supporting international cyber crime.

"It's imperative that we continue to work with partners to pursue and disrupt the major crime groups targeting the UK, but also, crucially, work to make sure that people have the knowledge and resources to make the UK as inhospitable as possible for cyber criminals in the first place."

(CD/JP)

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