Specialised training held on forensic examination of card skimming devices

The European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) hosted at Europol, in close cooperation with the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), jointly organised the 6th Forensic Expert Training on Examination of Skimming Devices in Wiesbaden on 27-29 May 2013.

The training was held in the premises of the Central Forensic BKA Lab with the participation of more than 50 experts (including EC3 experts) from 15 EU Member States, Canada, Norway, Russia and Switzerland.

The main aim of the event was to present and share knowledge on proactive forensic techniques developed in examining equipment currently used by cybercrime groups. Another aim was to learn about retrieving and decoding stolen payment card data, and to perform practical exercises on forensic examination of seized devices. Finally, participants also explored how to improve intelligence exchange between technical cyberexperts on a global level, to properly tackle the phenomenon of compromised electronic bank card data.

The great success of the event was possible thanks to the contributions of experts from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Payment card cyberfraud is a rather low risk but highly profitable criminal activity which brings organised crime groups originating from the EU a yearly income of around 1.5 billion euros. These cybercriminal assets can be invested in further developing criminal techniques or can be used to finance other forms of organised criminality.

Criminals are using ever more sophisticated techniques, devices are becoming smaller and smaller, and card data is being misused outside of European Union borders and on other continents. Cooperation on a global level and the exchange of modern cyber forensic techiniques between experts is therefore crucial to effectively tackling this serious cybercrime phenomenon.