Cybersecurity Director Choi: In the Cybercrime Fight, Help Wanted
Every day, our lives become more and more interconnected through the digital space. From our phones to our bank accounts, our work lives to our personal ones, all of it can be accessed through technology—and not just by us ourselves.
A report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center found that there were 800,944 registered complaints of cybercrime victimization in 2022, with most wronged parties falling in the 30–39 age range. In total, losses exceeded $10.3 billion. Perhaps most troubling of all, these predatory attacks by online bad actors are getting more and more sophisticated.
One Massachusetts woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous in telling her story, was the victim of a complex kind of scam. First, she was taken in by someone through an online dating site who earned her trust before robbing her of more than $150,000. But it didn’t stop there. Because after that she was contacted by actors impersonating FBI and CIA agents, who knew details about her previous scammer and warned her to remain silent about their correspondence. These criminals spoke to her by phone and texted her, creating an escalated sense of urgency, but ultimately backed off when they would not agree to meet up with her at a local police station.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were nearly 70,000 of these kinds of “romance scams” reported in 2022, accounting for $1.3 billion in losses. Speaking with NBC Boston about this latest digital disturbance, BU MET Director of Cybercrime Investigation & Cybersecurity Kyung-shick Choi explained that stories like this underscore the dire need for professionals with the kinds of skills learned by pursuing the MS in Criminal Justice with a concentration in Cybercrime Investigation & Cybersecurity as well as the four-course Cybercrime Investigation & Cybersecurity Graduate Certificate.
Among his efforts to help develop this needed fleet of skilled cyber defenders has been securing $1.3 million in Department of Justice grant funding, received in conjunction with Associate Dean Lou Chitkushev, which is dedicated towards training and educating law enforcement professionals in critical matters of digital evidence, computer forensics, and investigating cryptocurrency and dark web crimes. This funding has enabled BU MET to host the annual White Hat Conference, a free event open to all interested parties which brings together cybercrime specialists from law enforcement agencies all over the world to share resources and ideas, and which culminates in a career fair.
“We don’t have [enough] human resources in cyber investigation,” Dr. Choi attested. “So we’re trying to kind of build our capacity. But we are not there yet.”
Read more at NBC Boston.