Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in Connecticut say they have teamed to form the state’s first cybersecurity investigations and prosecutions task force to rein in a crime that costs Americans hundreds of millions in losses annually.
Outgoing Connecticut U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly and representatives of federal, state and local law enforcement Tuesday announced the formation of the Connecticut Cyber Task Force to investigate complex crimes in cyberspace. The unit is based in New Haven.
The task force includes the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Connecticut State Police.
Also members are 11 Connecticut police departments: Hartford, Bridgeport, Bristol, Fairfield, Greenwich, New Canaan, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Torrington and Westport.
Connecticut last year installed Arthur House as its first cybersecurity czar.
Daly, whose last day as Connecticut’s top Justice Department prosecutor is Friday, said American companies and consumers have lost an estimated $1.6 billion to cybercriminals in the last four years.
“The broad reach of cyber criminals can be felt almost every day in Connecticut,” Daly said in a statement. “Day after day, we learn of companies, municipalities, educational institutions, hospitals, public utilities, nonprofits and citizens being targeted by bad actors. These cyber criminals seek to disrupt our work, steal our intellectual property, compromise the personal or financial information of employees, customers and citizens through dedicated denial of service attacks, spear phishing campaigns, ransomware and malware attacks and other computer hacks or cyber intrusions.”
The Cyber Task Force initially, officials said, will focus its cybercrime investigations on two areas: identifying and disrupting criminal organizations that use computer intrusions to defraud companies of their money and information; and targeting criminal activity on the “dark web,” notably the illicit acquisition and distribution of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs.
On Daly’s watch, federal investigators and prosecutors in Connecticut have exposed and prosecuted several notable cybercrimes.
Among them, she said, was the dismantling of the Coreflood botnet in 2011, the prosecution and extradition of several Romanian citizens who stole financial and personal information in phishing schemes; a fentanyl distribution investigation that revealed the drug was being acquired in kilogram quantities over the dark web; the August arrest of a Nigerian citizen alleged to have operated a phishing scheme to acquire tax information from Connecticut school system employees; and the arrest in Spain of a Russian citizen who is alleged to have operated the Kelihos botnet for more than 10 years.
