F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen calls for establishment of ’Internetpol’

F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen calls for the establishment of 'Internetpol' to tackle organized crime on the Web.

F-Secure’s quarterly security wrap-up highlights the challenge of bringing cyber criminals to justice by examining several high profile cases which have been in the news recently.

Jeremy Jaynes, a prolific spammer in the United States, has had his conviction overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court following a ruling that the state Anti-Spam Law violated the First Amendment to the Constitution concerning the right to free and anonymous speech. In New Zealand, a teenage author of banking Trojans which earned millions of dollars for a criminal gang, walked free from a court despite pleading guilty.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office in Washington, United States, and Microsoft Corporation have announced that they are filing lawsuits against the purveyors of rogue security applications attempting to scare Internet users into buying worthless products.

As the courts and law enforcement struggle to stem the mounting Internet crime wave, Mikko Hypponen F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer says,”The Internet has no borders and online crime is almost always international, yet local police authorities often have limited resources for investigations. We should consider the creation of an online version of Interpol – ‘Internetpol’ – that is specifically tasked with targeting and investigating the top of the crimeware food chain.”

Other topics in the quarterly wrap-up include phishers attacking consumers using the international banking crisis as a ruse, a spamming campaign that uses the U.S. presidential election as a way of spreading malware, and the return of the malicious attachment in infecting computers.

The full third quarter 2008 security wrap-up is available at http://www.f-secure.com/2008

About F-Secure Corporation
F-Secure Corporation protects consumers and businesses against computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile networks. F-Secure’s award-winning solutions are available as a service subscription through more than 170 Internet service providers and mobile operator partners around the world, making F-Secure the global leader in this market.  The solutions are also available as licensed products through thousands of resellers globally. The company aspires to be the most reliable security provider, helping to make computer and smartphone users’ connected lives safe and easy. This is substantiated by the company’s independently proven ability to respond faster to new threats than its main competitors. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Finland, F-Secure has been listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd  since 1999. The company has consistently been one of the fastest growing publicly listed companies in the industry. The latest news on real-time virus threat scenarios is available at the F-Secure Data Security Lab weblog at http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/.