EU police agency Europol has warned that cybercriminals offering contract services for hire could provide means for the Daesh militants to attack Europe.
The so-called Darknet is being exploited by militants taking advantage of computer experts offering crime "at your service," the EU police agency Europol warned in its report “The Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment” (IOCTA) published Wednesday. The report concluded, “The volume, scope and material cost of cybercrime all remain on an upward trend and have reached very high levels.”
The Darknet is anything that is not visible to regular users: you can't just Google those sites. It's everything that's beneath the surface and that does include databases and subscription only services, Cath Senker an author of book, "Cybercrime and the Darknet" said to Sputnik News.
Though the extent to which the militants currently use cyber techniques is limited, the availability of cybercrime tools and services, illicit commodities such as firearms on the darknet, provide ample opportunities for this situation to change.
If the criminals and militants use the Darknet, accessed through the TOR browser, it can make be very difficult for law enforcement to track down who is at the end of an email address or chat username, Jake Hockley, the Director of Marclay Associates, a cybersecurity firm said. Traffic is, by default, encrypted in TOR so this makes monitoring traffic difficult.
Europol also called for greater security collaboration across national borders. Law enforcement presence in an area that has no effective national boundaries causes issues.