International cooperation to catch cybercriminals is up

"Countries are really looking at their laws to determine what they need to do to strengthen those laws so they deal with cybercrimes. A lot of them haven't done that before," Chris Painter, deputy chief of the computer crime and intellectual property section of the DOJ's criminal division, said in an interview with SC. "A lot of countries have significantly improved their laws."

Also, a high-tech G8 committee, which set up a network for fast international cooperation on cybercrime, has grown in membership. "It started with just the G8 countries. Now it's grown to over 40 countries."

International cooperation is critical in dealing with online criminals, Painter said: "A clever criminal will route their communication through as many different countries as they can to obscure or make the electronic trail run cold."

While there has been a lot of progress on the international front, there is still more to do, he added.

www.usdoj.gov