"Cybercrime is any crime that is enabled in any way by using the internet or technology," Paul C Dwyer explained to Ryan Tubridy in an interview that should probably scare you.
Luckily for us, there is light at the end of the dark web tunnel as experts like Paul are fighting the forces that threaten. "I started off as a geek and then I got qualified," said Paul, who has gained an international reputation with law enforcement agencies and governments all around the world from the FBI to the Middle East.
He heads up Cyber Risk International that provides a wide range of services to keep clients safe from attack. His pro bono work includes running Cyber Threat Talk Force and he explained some of their objectives to Ryan.
"The remit of that organization is we realise all the bad guys work together. They share, they help each other in order to meet their objectives, whatever that is, whether it’s to make money or ideology or even the really evil elements that are online."
"They don’t really understand the severity of what these things actually mean," Paul said of the average person sharing details online. It all sounds a bit like a cyber crime novel commented Ryan. That’s exactly what it’s like, said Paul. On the dark web, reality is stranger than fiction.
"If you can control opinion, you control democracy. This is what it boils down to and the fact is that those that hold the information or can control the narrative of that information are effectively able to control. I think to paraphrase George Orwell, he said that those who control the present can rewrite the past and therefore can write the future."
Listen back to Ryan's conversation with Paul on RTÉ Radio 1 above.
