Small group of Russian 'kingpin' hackers responsible for majority of cyber attacks, Europol says
The global campaign to catch cyber criminals has narrowed its focus to a small number of highly skilled programmers mostly operating in Russia.
Europe's criminal intelligence agency, Europol, estimated only 100 kingpins developed bugs, viruses and other destructive programs to sell to crime gangs around the world.
But efforts to crack down on the syndicates were hampered by poor relations between police in different countries.
Two major bugs – one called Heartbleed and the other known as Shellshock – crippled millions of computers and networks around the world this year.
There were countless examples of other malicious software or malware affecting users, often in ways that cost them money or privacy.
Europol's head of cyber crime, Troels Oerting, said a small group of Russian programmers were behind the majority of attacks.
"[There are] around 100 good programmers globally right now. There might be a bit more, a bit less, but that will be in the area," he said.
"It's downloaded by all kinds of criminals. That could be Western European criminals and Eastern European criminals or African or American criminals, but the majority of the kingpins seems right now to be located in [the] Russian speaking area."
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Europol and other law enforcement agencies have struggled to find ways to intervene, because most of the gangs operate across borders.
Mr Oerting said authorities were focused on the source of the problem.
"If we are good enough to identify the rather limited group of good programmers that I think we roughly know ... if we can target them and take them out of the equation, then the rest will fall down until they have been replaced," he said.
The task has been further complicated by the increasingly sophisticated methods used to hide users' identity online.
"I think that you have privacy and you have the right to privacy, but that doesn't mean that you have a right to be anonymous," Mr Oerting said.
Coordinating police operations in Russia was difficult because of the difficult relationship with the EU, Mr Oerting said, but the situation had improved.
"I am increasingly happy because I've just been in Moscow a couple of times and I've just made an agreement that we will come with four very, very interesting cases to them," he said.
"We'll see the outcome, of course. But, so far, it seems to be going in the right direction actually."
Despite that change in direction, Europol expected the attacks would become more frequent and more destructive.
