The m00p gang investigation: a failure or a success?

Security companies and law enforcement agencies often collaborate on cyber crime investigations, and most of these investigations do end up with the arrest, prosecution and sentencing of some or all people involved.

Unfortunately, the last step is the weakest link in this chain – an investigation that has been beautifully executed can end up with sentences that will hardly make hardened criminals wary of repeating the offense.

In this podcast recorded at Virus Bulletin 2011, F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen talks about the long investigation into an international malware writing group dubbed the “m00p gang” and offers his opinion on whether it can ultimately be considered a success.

Listen to the podcast here.

Mikko Hypponen has worked with F-Secure in Finland since 1991. He has led his team through the largest outbreaks in history. His team took down the world-wide network used by the Sobig.F worm. He was the first to warn the world about the Sasser outbreak, he named the infamous Storm Worm and he has done classified briefings on the operation of the Stuxnet worm.

He has assisted law enforcement in USA, Europe and Asia on cybercrime cases. He has written for magazines such as Scientific American and Foreign Policy and for newspapers like The New York Times.

Mr. Hypponen has addressed the most important security-related conferences worldwide. He is also an inventor for several patents, including US patent 6,577,920 “Computer virus screening”. He has been the subject of dozens of interviews in global TV and print media, including in Vanity Fair.
Mr. Hypponen, born in 1969, was selected among the 50 most important people on the web by the PC World magazine. He also received the Virus Bulletin Award, awarded every ten years, as “Best in industry”.