Human trafficking for cybercrime: WEF issues warning

Human trafficking for cybercrime has emerged as a major area of concern with the convergence of cyber and violent crime. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has drawn attention to the burgeoning trend of cyber-crime gangsterism becoming a new frontier of human trafficking in an article a few days ago.

At least 220,000 people had been trafficked in Southeast Asia and been forced to run online scams, said the WEF article quoting from a UN report published in August 2023.      

“Criminals are taking advantage of the poor job opportunities available to young graduates and professionals in many countries. The criminals convince people to travel abroad with promises of high-quality work and then threaten them and physically coerce them into working as online fraudsters. They are forced to work on online scam farms run by cybercriminals in Southeast Asia”, the article said.

The 38-page UN report titled Online Scam Operations and Trafficking into Forced Criminality in Southeast Asia, reveals that the majority of the cyber-slavery victims belonged to Myanmar and Cambodia.

The emergence of cyber-slavery as a new frontier of crime has to be seen in conjunction with reports about massive data breaches involving the personal details of Indians. The US-based cyber security firm Resecurity in a report on its Blogspot a week back has claimed that confidential information of 81.5 crore Indians is on sale on the Dark Web for a sum of $80,000. The data included passport and Aadhar information. Massive data breach connected to health records and other personal information of the majority of Indians has been reported in the recent past. The scale of such a massive data breach has to be viewed in the context of organised crime syndicates deploying large numbers of persons to meet their objectives.

The WEF article titled -- Cyber Crime and Violent Crime are Converging: Here’s How to Deal with It -- says cyber-slavery gangsters copy “what they see in the legal market”.

Explaining the modus operandi the article says “Think about the advent of subscription model ‘software-as-a-service’ offerings that give businesses access to user-friendly products ranging from video calls to project management and customer service tools. Equally, criminals have their own ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ where experienced cybercriminals sell accessible tools and knowledge to help others carry out cybercrimes. This brings more criminals into the cybercrime market by lowering the cost and level of skill needed to be an effective online fraudster and deliver ransomware attacks that can bankrupt businesses and destroy livelihoods”.

The operations of cyber slavery gangs show that the data breaching has moved away from geeks turned hackers operating on individual basis to organised gangsterism cutting across geographical boundaries.

Rise in Cyber Crime

According to the WEF article “Cybercrime has expanded for the same reasons that drove the mega growth of legal online businesses. The internet allows criminals to operate seamlessly across borders, accessing a marketplace of victims anywhere, anytime and at scale. The internet also helps criminals conceal their identity, location and size”.

Cyber-enabled fraud and extortion are bad enough but we’re seeing an increasing number of criminal cyber-attacks that have physical consequences. Whether it’s the double victimisation that happens when victims of human trafficking in one country are chained to laptops and forced to defraud citizens in another, or the consequences of a ransomware attack on a hospital, the changing shape of the cybercriminal market has made it easier for traditional organised crime to expand their reach from the online world into our real lives”, the article said.

Difficulty in Countering Cybercrime

The cross-border operations “make cybercrime difficult for law enforcement to deal with”. Secondly, in many countries police forces are only in the beginning of building capacity to counter such crimes.

Despite such difficulties, efforts are on to develop systems and processes to disrupt the operations of organised cyber-crime syndicates. The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime has initiated a process to prepare a Cybercrime Atlas as part of efforts to counter the growing menace. “Just like any business with a complex supply chain, any small disruptions at the right point in the criminal network have the potential to be highly disruptive”, said the WEF article.