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Cybercrime in Russia

Date: July 01, 2005
Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By: CCRC staff

The ever-increasing number of computer crimes is outrunning the trend of computerization in Russia. According to the According to the Information center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, 13723 computer crimes were committed in Russia last year. It makes a twofold increase over the previous number of 7052 cyber crimes in 2003.

According to the report of Boris Miroshnikov, head of Bureau on special technical operations at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, at the “Information Security of a region, organization, and people” conference held in June 2005 in Moscow, law enforcement officers file in average 170-180 high tech criminal cases weekly.

Officers of the Bureau prevented and brought materials on 2189 crimes in the sphere of high technologies to the court. More than a half of those, 1120 cases, were related to access without right in wired and wireless networks. The other half of cases were generally related to violation of copyright and adjacent rights, illegal turnover of radio electronic devices.

Legal criminal base
The Russian Federation was the first CIS country to change its criminal laws and introduced norms foreseeing penal liability for computer crimes.

“Crimes in the sphere of computer information” is the Chapter 28 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation adopted June 13, 1996 and inured on January 1, 1997.
The Chapter includes the following articles: unauthorized access to computer information, Creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs, Violation of operating rules of a computer, system or network.

Units fighting cybercrime
In order to maintain radio electronic security of police units, to combat unpremeditated radio interference, to reveal and neutralize special technical devices designed (developed, adapted, programmed) to secretly obtain information, prevent attempts to penetrate in computer networks and other illegal actions a new unit was created at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR in 1986. It was named Department R (radio electronic fight).

In 1997, with the introduction of the new Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and penal responsibility for crimes in the sphere of computer information (Chapter 28), and also other computer crimes, Department R became a secret search unit. On October 7, 1998 Department R was reformed into Department on fighting high tech crimes. Regional departments were created till 1999. In 2002 the department was abolished, its stuff, structure and equipment were passed to the Department of special technical measures at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Nowadays these units are called Departments K (on fighting computer crimes) at the Department of special technical measures.

The main burden of investigation computer crimes lies on specialized units of the Investigative committee at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. These units are created at levels of general and regional police departments. Police investigative officers tightly cooperate with these units.
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