The Cyber Division (CyD) is a
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
division which heads the national effort to investigate and prosecute internet crimes, including "cyber based terrorism, espionage, computer intrusions, and major cyber fraud." This division of the FBI uses the information it gathers during investigation to inform the public of current trends in cyber crime. It focuses around three main priorities: computer intrusion, identity theft, and cyber fraud. It was created in 2002.
Cyber Crime
A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing the ...
, p. 2
In response to billions of dollars lost in cyber-crimes, that have had devastating impact on the United States' economic and national security, the FBI created a main "Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters to "address cyber crime in a coordinated and cohesive manner." Branching out from there, specially trained cyber squads have been placed in 56 field offices across the United States, staffed with "agents and analysts who protect against computer intrusions, theft of intellectual property and personal information, child pornography and exploitation, and online fraud." Due to internet threats around the world, the FBI has developed "cyber action teams" that travel globally to help in "computer intrusion cases" and gather information that helps to identify cyber crimes that are most dangerous to our national security.
[ Keeping the focus not only on national security but also on threats to citizens of the United States, the FBI has long been focused on identity theft, which is a growing concern for American citizens. Since fiscal year 2008 through the middle of fiscal year 2013, the number of identity theft related crimes investigated by the Bureau across all programs have resulted in more than 1,600 convictions, $78.6 million in restitutions, $4.6 billion in recoveries, and $6.8 billion in fines.
High priority is given to investigations that involve ]terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
organizations or intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be d ...
operations sponsored by foreign governments, which FBI calls "national security cyber intrusions".[ The Cyber Division has primary responsibility for the FBI's efforts to counter national security–related cyber intrusions. The Cyber Division priorities in rank order are:
:(a) cyber intrusions;
:(b) child sexual exploitation;
:(c) ]intellectual property right
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
s; and
:(d) internet fraud
Internet fraud is a type of cybercrime fraud or deception which makes use of the Internet and could involve hiding of information or providing incorrect information for the purpose of tricking victims out of money, property, and inheritance. Inte ...
.[
FBI Cyber Division works through the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) and cyber investigative squads located in each FBI field office.][ Since 2008, NCIJTF is the primary American agency responsible for coordinating cyber threats investigations, and liaisons with ]Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA), Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to:
Current departments of defence
* Department of Defence (Australia)
* Department of National Defence (Canada)
* Department of Defence (Ireland)
* Department of National Defense (Philippi ...
(DOD), Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...
(DHS), and National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...
(NSA).malware
Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, dep ...
to redirect users to rogue DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...
servers (Operation Ghost Click
DNSChanger is a DNS hijacking Trojan. The work of an Estonian company known as Rove Digital, the malware-infected computers by modifying a computer's DNS entries to point toward its own rogue name servers, which then injected its own advertisi ...
); taking down a botnet
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...
based on Coreflood
Coreflood is a trojan horse and botnet created by a group of Russian hackers and released in 2010. The FBI included on its list of infected systems "approximately 17 state or local government agencies, including one police department; three airport ...
trojan used for fraud; taking down a group responsible for robbing over 2,000 ATM machines at once; taking down a group of about 100 involved in phishing
Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...
(Operation Phish Phry); and taking down of the DarkMarket
DarkMarket was an English-speaking internet cybercrime forum created by Renukanth Subramaniam in London that was shut down in 2008 after FBI agent J. Keith Mularski infiltrated it using the alias Master Splyntr, leading to more than 60 arrests w ...
cyber crime forum used by criminals.
Organization
* Cyber Operations Branch
** Cyber Operations Section I
** Cyber Operations Section II
** Cyber Operations Section III
** Cyber Operations Section IV
** Cyber Operations Section V
* Cyber Readiness, Outreach, and Intelligence Branch
** Cyber Readiness Section
** Cyber Outreach Section
** Cyber Intelligence Section
See also
* Cyberterrorism
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, la ...
References
{{reflist, 2
External links
FBI Cyber Division: Cyber Crime stories
FBI Most Wanted Cyber Criminals
Testimony on the activities of the FBI's Cyber Division in relation to the theft of intellectual property
* Cyber Security Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions
FBI jobs: Cyber Division
FBI Expands Cybercrime Division
2002 establishments in the United States
Computer security organizations
Federal Bureau of Investigation