Emotet & co: the fight against cybercrime

Hardly a week goes by without reports about cyber attacks in the news. These much-noticed hacks often affect companies and government institutions, but private individuals are also the targets of criminal hackers. Most of the time, it’s simply about money; cybercrime has come to be a business model. Linda Bertram is a public prosecutor at the Center for Combatting Cybercrime (ZIT). She and her team hunt down such groups and are just as internationally networked as the hackers they pursue. In this podcast, she talks to Hosts Marlene Görger and Petra Gehring about the major strike against the group behind Emotet, the “king of malware,” which succeeded in early 2021 and caused quite a stir. Bertram explains what cybercrime is, how investigators tackle it and how individuals can protect themselves. This episode of Digitalgespräch also asks what considerations the rule of law requires of investigative teams and what limits it sets for them.