The art of cybercrime
The excitement around NFTs, rich digital experiences and internet connected devices, highlights the craftmanship of digital professionals. This streak of creativity, however, extends to cyber-criminals who are developing highly imaginative, sophisticated and cutting-edge approaches to crimes that are difficult to identify and detect. The period of digital acceleration we’re experiencing and the ‘internet of things’ are fueling opportunities for thieves and require businesses to think ahead about they can better themselves and their customers.
The creativity of criminals
Browsing through Spotify a couple of years ago, you might have come across either ‘Music from the Heart’ or ‘Soulful Music’. Both were highly popular playlists although the music was dreadful: Soulful Music contained 467 hastily arranged songs, nearly all under a minute long and composed by artists no-one had ever heard of. But someone was listening. An ingenious gang had created these playlists, used machines to generate each song (so they owned the copyright), and then set up thousands of premium accounts to listen away on a randomised repeat loop, always skipping to the next song after 30 seconds, at which point the $0.004 royalty payment kicked in. For months thousands of fake accounts listened to fake songs on fake playlists. The only thing that was real was the almost $1 million they made off with.[i]
It’s hard not to feel a little admiration for the audacity, ingenuity and business acumen of the fraudsters behind this ruse. They might be immoral but most cyber-criminals, whether it’s the cliché kid-in-a-hoodie or a well-paid foreign government agent, are just as smart, creative, and motivated as you are. And they don’t have to worry about ‘GDPR’ either.
