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The Morning Briefing: Cyber crime, law enforcement

"The Morning Briefing" is SmartPlanet's daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we're reading the latest news in cyber crime.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

"The Morning Briefing" is SmartPlanet's daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we're reading the latest news in cyber crime.

1.) U.S. attempts to gain global authority on cyber crime. In the aftermath of backing down over the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills, the U.S. government seems to want to salvage something by turning its gaze on becoming the global authority concerning cyber crime and protection standards.

The bill -- the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act -- is likely to go to a vote in the next few months, and would allow the U.S. to place economic sanctions on countries that do not adhere to an international standard in the fight against cyber criminals.

2.) UK creates specialist cyber crime hubs. £30m ($47.4m) has been invested by the UK government in the fight against crime online through the creation of three 'cyber crime hubs' across the country. Each base will work in conjunction with the Metropolitan police force, and is expected to increase the capabilities of the force to investigate cyber crime, as well as build a point of communication for consumers.

3.) Cyber criminals sell Facebook, Twitter logins. A 'factory outlet' for stolen Facebook and Twitter credentials harvested by cyber criminals has been discovered selling these 'low value' logins through advertisements online. These details are thought to have been harvested during more serious attempts to steal online banking details, but some malware, such as trojans, will gather additional logins on the off-chance they are valuable.

4.) FBI confirms conference call hack. The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed last week that a conference call between U.S. officials and British law enforcement was hacked -- Anonymous taking responsibility for the act. It is currently under investigation.

5.) Google, Microsoft, Facebook unite to battle phishing scams. The three Internet giants teaming up is a rare occurance, but together with 11 other companies that function online, they have formed an alliance in an attempt to combat phishing scams. The alliance is known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, or DMARC for short. The aim is to lay down new, uniform email standards to try and stop the cyber crime practice.

Bonus: Hackers target lonely hearts with Valentine's phishing scams

Image credit: Thomas Kohler

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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