Prepare for crimes of the future!

Key Note of Dr. Pero Mićić at
Leaseurope’s 2^nd Conference on Fighting Fraud in the Leasing Industry in Brussels

Prepare for crimes of the future!

The world got safer. Overall, less people die or get injured through crime. But beneath the the surface, in the cyberworld, there is an exponentially growing number of incidents of crime. The attack surface is growing. Crime gets dematerialized. Bank robberies are down. But cybercrime is way up. Several factors like “bring your own device” and new technologies in general are making the threats rapidly bigger in size and number.

We all base our decisions on assumptions about the future. But there is no way to predict the future. The solution to this dilemma are scenarios that help to improve assumptions and be less surprised by the future. They help to see more of what can possibly happen.

Obviously, everything that technology is and will be able to do, we can be sure will be used for criminal purposes. We all tend to underestimate the capabilities of criminals. Among the scariest capabilities of modern criminals are remote listening over hundreds of meters, cyber-jacking of planes and ships without even entering, with only an Android phone, and malware and ransomware in cars, robots and even insideables like cardiac pacemakers, insuline pumps, or artificial pancreas.

Criminals are often much more focused and committed than the police. Police is regional, crime is globalized. Scientific research papers provide a great source for ideas to criminals. Synthetic biology will make it possible to simply create drugs withoug any plants or intercontinental transport.

To thrive as a criminal nobody needs to code themselves. There are app stores with profiles, reviews and virtually all the features that we are used to with Amazon. You can even buy CaaS, crime as a service. Today’s gangster run their own encrypted communication networks and even control centers.

What shall we do?