Live streaming of child sexual abuse and so-called “revenge porn” is on the rise on the Internet, the European Police Office (Europol) said yesterday, adding that vulnerable children are increasingly falling victim to sexual predators.
“Live distant child abuse is ... being reported as a growing threat,” Europol said in its latest annual organized cybercrime threat assessment, released at its headquarters in The Hague.
Live streaming of child sex abuse “involves a perpetrator directing the live abuse of children on a [prearranged] specific time frame through video sharing platforms,” Europol said in the 72-page report.
CUSTOM-MADE
“The abuse can be ‘tailored’ to the requests of the soliciting offender(s) and recorded,” it added.
More generally, “the volume, scope and material cost of cybercrime all remain on an upward trend and have reached very high levels,” the agency said in a separate statement.
Most illegal activities take place in the so-called “darknet” or encrypted peer-to-peer networks, which offer greater degrees of anonymity to users.
Traditionally, live stream child abuse groups were based in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, but “more recent reports indicate that it is now spreading to other countries,” Europol said.
“Regions of the world with high levels of poverty, limited domestic child protection measures and easy access to children are being targeted by offenders,” the agency said, without naming specific countries.
“The exploitation of children online is a huge problem for us,” Europol European Cybercrime Centre head Steven Wilson told reporters in an interview.
Wilson added cybercrime investigators have also noticed a rise in so-called “revenge porn,” where sexually explicit images are posted without another person’s consent in order to harm that person or cause distress.
INFORMATION
To counter these threats, Europol was working on a series of information videos on the dangers of online sexual abuse, which is to be distributed in schools in various European countries.
The report also highlights other cybercrimes, such as the growing threat of “ransomware,” which infects a victim’s computer and then captures data, before demanding a payment for the data to be released.
Whereas ransomware used to target individual victims and small businesses, it is now focused on major companies and even public institutions, such as hospitals, Wilson said.
“We have seen instances where hospitals have had their records locked out, potentially with fatal consequences,” Wilson said, referring to an ongoing case in the US.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS