2nd Newsletter October 2015
T
he vociferous proliferation
of cyber attacks has resulted
not only in an increase in
the number of incidents
being recorded, but also in
the ferocity, persistence, variety and
potential impact (both societal and
economic) of the underlying attacks
upon an increasingly diverse range of
targets (i.e. persons, services, entities).
This increase can be attributed to
a range of factors, such as: a) the
overall growth of internet use; b) the
penetration of the Internet services
into our daily lives; and c) the latest
technological achievements in ICT
that enable many criminal actions
to move online, due to perceptions
of anonymity and the potential to
obscure evidence.
As one specific facet of this overall
trend, the internet has seen a stark
rise in its use as a vector for the online
sexual solicitation of children and the
possession and distribution of explicit
and abusive material.
UINFC2 Concept
UINFC2 aims to facilitate an increase in the cooperation and coordination
among all major EU stakeholders, National Authorities, Law enforcement
Agencies and related bodies through the provision of structured, analysed
and correlated information, in real time, related to cybercrime and online child
sexual exploitation.
Co-funded
by
the
Prevention of and fight
against Crime Programme
of the European UnionFight
against Crime Programme
of the European Union
Project details
Start date: 2014-09-01
End date: 2016-08-31
Duration: 24 Months
Reference: GA n° 4000005215
Budget: 544.745,56 €
Funding: 490.271,00 €
Call: HOME/2013/ISEC
UINFC2 Approach
The UINFC2 project will design, develop and pilot a software platform providing the
intelligent analysis of collected or maintained data, perform automated monitoring
and inspection, as well as produce automatic decisions and reports in order to
increase the amount and quality of information available to stakeholders.
The main objectives of the project are:
• To build and strengthen the capabilities of LEAs, associations, organizations
and EU bodies to strategically combat cybercrime and online child sexual
exploitation.
• To assist LEAs in automatically detecting online illegal data from social media,
blogs, underground communities etc., and determine investigation priorities.
• To introduce the latest achievements of ICT in data mining, intelligence,
correlation, classification, automatic monitoring, decision making, report
producing, etc., in combating cybercrimes.
• To facilitate the formal exchange of compiled information amongst all
stakeholders in order to enhance collaboration and effectively counteract
cybercrimes and online child sexual exploitation.
Expected Results • A comprehensive study on emerging cybercrime patterns and threats.
• Consolidated specifications on cybercrime, online child exploitation reports
and communication procedures between citizens and LEAs at both national
and EU level.
• A ready to use open platform that can collect online data from various sources,
perform intelligent processing and provide guidance through formal reports.
• Strengthen the collaboration and promote common understanding among all
the involved stakeholders.
• Engage all relevant stakeholders (academia, citizens, private sector) in
preventing and fighting cybercrime and on online child sexual exploitation.
2nd Newsletter October 2015
• To strengthen the mission of EC3, by producing strategic reports on crimes’
trends, emerging threats and comparable statistics among Member States.
Platform’s Architecture Overview
Architecture
The envisioned UINFC2 platform will be:
• Able to operate seamlessly where submitted reports and collected, through
crawling, data compose the main input sources of the platform
• Interoperable with existing, Hotline and LEA, National and EU reporting
platforms
• Able to support different types of users and access rights
• Flexible on analysis and visualization methods
2nd Newsletter October 2015
For details please see the figure below
Citizens
Citizens can only file a report directly to the UINFC2 platform through the panel
below. Each field can be either mandatory or optional based on the legislation of the
respective country employing the platform.
The administrator of the UINFC2 platform can create a user (Admin, LEA and Hotline)
as well as to configure the fields of the report, which can be set as mandatory and
optional.
2nd Newsletter October 2015
Administrator
Law Enforcement Agencies
LEA users can file reports directly to the UINFC2 platform or/and upload existing
reports from reporting platforms/databases interconnected with UINFC2 system.
Furthermore, they can analyze the submitted reports and the all data collected
through the crawler using various charts and statistics based on their preferences.
Crawler
2nd Newsletter October 2015
The crawler can be launched either automatically using the URLs contained in the
reports or manually using the URLs inserted by authorized users. Furthermore, the
crawler can be customized (e.g. Max depth of crawling, number of pages etc.) based
on the preferences of the authorized users.
Hotlines
Hotline users can perform similar tasks as the LEA users. Restrictions to data access
for Hotline users will be based on the respective National and EU legislations.
Visualization
The visualization of the emerged results from the collected data is of significant
importance and therefore several statistics and gadgets have been customized to
accommodate the needs of the UINFC2 platform (LEA & Hotline users).
2nd Newsletter October 2015
1st Platform Demonstration & Dissemination Workshop
The 1st UINFC2 Platform Demonstration & Dissemination Workshop was held, as
part of the Open Source Intelligence Conference 2015, at the National Fire Corps
Headquarters in Rome during the 8th and 9th of July 2015. The conference was a
convergence of various EU funded security projects (FP7, Horizon 2020 and DGHome Affairs).
The participant projects are focused on the application of open-source intelligence
(OSINT) in various security fields such as the detection of cyber-crime, crisis
management and organized crime detection and was attended by a broad base
of security domain stakeholders including researchers, private sector industry,
law enforcement and other first response agencies making it an ideal platform
for dissemination of the UINFC2 project and the demonstration of its technical
outputs to relevant domain end-users.
2nd Newsletter October 2015
During the first day of the conference, the UINFC2 project participated in a panel
discussion entitled “Open Source Intelligence: Applications for first responders”
alongside representatives from academia, law enforcement and the private
sector. The objective of the discussion was to share and discuss the challenges
and possibilities that OSINT provides for first response agencies, and the role of
research in exploring this potential.
During the second day of the UINFC2 Platform Demonstration & Dissemination
Workshop, the main architecture, techniques, functionalities and components of
the platform were presented to all invited participants from National and EU LEA’s,
Hotlines and research community. The visual representation of the processed data,
tailored to the needs of the identified stakeholders was extensively discussed in
addition to how the UINFC2 platform will promote seamless cooperation between
Hotlines, LEA’s and Citizens.
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Co-funded by the Prevention of and fight against Crime Programme of the European Union
Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union