The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) has published its 2019 Organised Crime Threat Assessment Report (IOCTA).
On 9 October, Europol presented its IOCTA report on the threat of cybercrime. According to the EU law enforcement organisation, cybercrime should be approached in a holistic way by saying: "Cybercrime must be tackled in a holistic way".
The fifth edition of Europol's IOCTA report paints a troublesome picture and shows that cryptographic software remains the most important cyber attack faced by European cybercrime investigators and then closely linked to attacks that illegally retrieve financial data, such as credit card information, online banking credentials or currency wallets.
Europol further points out that the various actors within the cryptographic currency ecosystem can be seen as beneficial targets for cybercriminals. Law enforcement authorities are convinced that the trend of crime is evolving towards cryptographic currencies and that more financially motivated cybercrime gangs will shift their attention to any entity with a large stock of cryptographic currency assets.
