1. Thailand against Cybercrime
1.1 Introduction
Though cybercrime is rather new to Thailand, the computer crime rate keeps increasing over the last few years. The Royal Thai Police has established the High-Tech Crime Center (HTCC) to respond to the technology crime since June 30, 2005. Being a new division reporting to the office of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT), HTCC is initially assigned to technically support the local police in handling computer crime complaints and investigation and to work collectively with the Forensics division pertaining to electronic evidence examination thereby filling the technology gap within major police works. Its tasks not only include international cooperation among law enforcement agencies but also promotion of police awareness in computer crime and collaboration with local industries in Thailand. In this manner, HTCC therefore plays an important role in national technology crime prevention and information security planning.
1.2 Organization
Being a divisional level unit in the office of ICT, HTCC’s organization structure is as follows.
Office of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT):
· Criminal Records Division
· Police Information Center
· Police Communications Division
· High-Tech Crime Center
1.3 HTCC Staff
Commander 1
Deputy Commander 1
Superintendents 2
Deputy Superintendents 2
Inspectors and Subinspectors 7
Non-commissioned officers 15
1.4 Roles
· Investigation on technology crime
· Electronic evidence forensic examination
· Cooperation with international law enforcement and other local government unit
· Computer crime training to local police
· Handling public complaints and consulting on technology crime
· Research on pattern of crime committed
· Advise on planning of technology crime prevention
2. New technological methods in cybercrime investigation
2.1 As a newly established unit, rather than concentrating on a research work, HTCC has put very much emphasis on carrying out the forensic activities to reach international standard by using computer forensic software such as Encase v.5 , FIM (Field Intelligence Model) and FTK. Unfortunately because of their high price, these softwares are only available to few police units. HTCC therefore has brought other open source softwares for example Knoppix, NetCat and DD into police application especially for preview and acquiring electronic evidence.
2.2 There were many cases where HTCC was requested for technical assistance. One example is that an underground lotto gambling software diskette with password protection was sent for evidence examination. The HTCC forensic team had reverse engineered it by using disassembly and bypass the password checking which enabled printing out the hidden data for evidence examination report.
2.3 Regarding the investigation techniques, because many ISP’s in Thailand now provide the service through cache servers thereby making IP address tracing very difficult. During the recent world cup soccer, HTCC had introduced a new technique. Instead of normal IP address tracing of perpetrators from the email, the ISPs were subpoenaed to summon the cache data over which a search for URL of the football betting websites was done. After careful analysis of the frequency of those websites visit, the useful information which could lead to further investigation of many people involved in gambling both bookmakers and punters was obtained. The result of that investigation was satisfactory.
3. Training of computer crime investigation and forensics
Having been short of technical personnel. HTCC has to focus mainly on training of its own personnels and those who work together with them. Nationwide police training will be conducted starting the coming years. Within this year alone, HTCC personnels have participated in training of the following course.
· Encase intermediate course 5 days 8 persons
· Basic computer forensics (ILEA) 2 weeks 2 persons
· Joint Thai-Malaysia commercial crime 2 weeks 3 persons
· Pacific training initiative (FBI) 2 weeks 1 person
· Computer forensics (JICA) 1 month 1 person
· Traditional investigative technique 3 months 1 person
4. Cybercrime situation and countermeasures
The cybercrime crime situation in Thailand tends to increase. There is a growing tendency that more young people becoming victimized and juvenile offenders in computer crime.
Libel, fraud and dissemination of pornography over the internet are the top three on the crime complaints list. This year Thailand may see the beginning of credit card fraud through wiretapping which was brought in from neighbouring country and infringement of intellectual property right of music by sharing of large files in a certain website.
There was an ISP who did not cooperate with the police in IP address tracing by claiming that disclosing it might invade its customer’s privacy right. HTCC had to file a consultation to the office of Council of State pertaining to the police authority to summon for evidence from ISPs. The Council of State ruled that the police investigator is authorized to summon for evidence in accordance with the criminal procedural law.
Promotion public awareness on internet safety has to focus also to the parents as a target group because most of them still lack computer and internet knowledge. Production of a media like short spot video showing several stories of real life situation in a family with guidelines shall be made available and televised during the prime time over the public service media channel.
Now there are many new IT businesses offering new services that need regulation to control their operation. For instance internet café, online game, prepaid card for mobile phones, international calling, wireline internet, wi-fi internet, etc. It is essential to put preventive measures into effect against access to these services by means of identity verification.
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