Brazil to bring order to cyberspace

Steps to halt human trafficking unveiled

SAO PAULO, Feb 27, (Agencies): Long seen as the Wild West of online fraud, Brazil is about to implement its first cyber-crimes law in an attempt to protect its rapidly expanding banking and e-commerce industries.

But online security experts warn that jail terms ranging from two months to three years may be insufficient to fight electronic fraud, a problem that cost the local financial industry $700 million in 2012, according to Brazil’s banking association Febraban.

Brazil ranks among the world’s top producers of spam, Trojan viruses and phishing, according to security firms, and until now Brazilian cyber criminals have operated in the open, trading stolen data in online forums and posting YouTube videos of themselves with wads of cash.

“The sense of impunity is huge,” says Fabio Assolini, a senior malware analyst with the online security company Kaspersky Lab in Sao Paulo. “Brazilian cyber criminals feel free to work.”

Online theft has not only hit the financial industry but is also casting a shadow over Brazil’s growing online retail market, a $12 billion industry that recently attracted heavyweights such as US online retailer Amazon.com Inc.

Experts say Brazil is finally moving in the right direction. However, they warn not to expect an overnight fix for Latin America’s largest online marketplace.

“We see an awakening phase in Brazil,” says Limor Kessem, a cyber crimes specialist in Tel Aviv with online security firm RSA, a division of EMC Corp.

Changing

“Things will really start changing once criminals see other people are being arrested and going to jail.”

The law that takes effect in April was hastily passed last year after Carolina Dieckmann, a Brazilian soap opera star, had dozens of intimate pictures stolen from her computer and leaked to the Internet.

Security experts say the “Carolina Dieckmann Computer Crimes Law” should, for instance, help improve Brazil’s dubious position as a global producer of phishing, a type of crime where hackers redirect users of financial services to fake sites to steal their passwords and other confidential data.

Reported phishing attacks in Brazil jumped 95 percent last year, according to official figures. RSA says Brazil is the world’s fourth-biggest host of such attacks after the United States, Britain and Germany. What makes Brazil so attractive? Lack of regulation on the one hand coupled with a fast-growing base of new Internet users.

With just 48 percent of its population online and a swelling middle class, Brazil is seen as one of the new frontiers for Internet services and ecommerce.

“As digital inclusion increases so does the number of potential victims of fraud,” says Demi Getschko, director of Brazil’s Internet regulator, NIC.br.

Brazilians also use Internet banking at rates comparable to more developed markets. Almost 50 percent of the country’s bank accounts are accessible online, similar to US levels and twice the Latin American average.

Brazil’s banking industry says it was able to stem losses from electronic fraud by 7 percent in 2012, mainly through stronger authentication protocols.

Febraban welcomed the law but says it wants more.

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BRASILIA: Brazil on Tuesday unveiled new steps to combat human trafficking, including tighter border controls and a clampdown on both the organ trade and the recruitment of slave labor.

The new strategy, to be in force until 2016, would target not only sexual slavery but also forced labor, organ trafficking and the illegal adoption of children, government officials told a press conference here.

Human trafficking “goes well beyond sexual exploitation,” said Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo, flanked by his counterparts Maria do Rosario, in charge of human rights, and Eleonora Menicucci, in charge of women’s issues.

The first national plan against human trafficking was launched in 2008.

The new plan aims to step up border vigilance through the creation of new control posts and includes penal reform to criminalize illegal adoption of children, organ extraction and forced labor.

“The borders are a source of great concern,” said Cardozo, adding that the country plans to invest nearly $3 million for the creation of new control posts to deal with human trafficking.

Between 2005 and 2011, 475 Brazilians were found to be victims of international human trafficking, mainly in Suriname, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands. Most of them were women subjected to sexual exploitation.