The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) are hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at their headquarters in Canberra. Under the auspices of the AFP, the AHTCC is party to the formal Joint Operating Arrangement established between the AFP, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Computer Network Vulnerability Team of the Australian Signals Directorate.
The AHTCC is an Australian-wide policing initiative to coordinate the efforts of Australian law enforcement in combating serious, complex and multi-jurisdictional Internet-based crimes, particularly those beyond the capability of individual police agencies in Australia. Other roles include protecting the information infrastructure of Australia, and providing information to other law enforcement to help combat online crime.
Technological advancements, and greater internet accessibility, has seen a growth in cyber criminality. The Australian Federal Police have established the Australian High Tech Crime Centre to prevent such crimes from occurring in the digital space. State and community police work in corporation with the AFP to combat cyber crime.
Overview
Technology and its advancements, including greater and broader internet accessibility, have boosted cybercrime. The AFP established the AHTCC to cease and prevent online fraudulent behaviour. State and community police work incorporation with the AFP to combat digital crime.
AHTCC was established in July 2003, to investigate online fraudulent matters and is currently directed by Kevin Zuccato. The AHTCC, today, continues to fight against cybercrime. Commonwealth Laws outline the Cybercrime regulations in Australia.
Cybercrime is defined by the AFP as “crimes directed at computers or other information communications technologies (ICTs) (such as computer intrusions and denial of service attacks), and crimes where computers or ICTs are an integral part of an offence (such as online fraud)”.
Digital attacks are often conducted by cyber adversaries, who are individuals or groups of people that specialize in conducting cyberattacks, online crime and malicious activity.
AHTCC's main role is to ‘discover levels of online criminal activity’ and to undertake necessary measures to prevent or combat digital crime (Platypus, 2009, p. 7).
History
The AHTCC was established in 2003, as a response to the rapid rise in digital usage and technological capabilities. The growth in Internet potential provided new capacities for criminals to engage in online fraudulent activities. Cybercrime has been existent since 1978 when the internet was first established and dispersed. Security systems have realised the need for continuous data moderation, and the monitoring of user activity online and offline. With the rise of e-commerce transactions a ‘dark’ web/ ‘black market’ has emerged and targets users of internet.
In 2003, at the beginning of the AHTCC, the centre had a budget of $4 million per annum and was operated by 13 staff, currently, the AFP has 258 staff working in technology and innovation and 319 in the security sector, with a total of 6695 staff across the board.
In 2015, Australia had a significant data breach from overseas, an Australian Insurance company was the target of a cyberattack, in which criminals gained access to prohibited government systems and compromised the finances of notable businesses, damaging Australia's security systems. The AFP solved this.
There is widespread dissemination of pornographic content on the internet. User anonymity is used to conduct this behaviour, as tracing the criminal behind the crime is difficult. Some estimates suggest that 20,000 images of child porn are posted online each week (Broadhurst, 2017).
Recently, the AHTCC was highly successful in a case known as ‘Operation Carpo’, whereby a Western Australian man was prosecuted for withholding 56,000 credit card details, 53,000 usernames and passwords and 110,000 domain names.