PART I: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF CYBERCRIME IN THE COMMONWEALTH ‘It has no capital, no airport, and only 1400 people who call it home, but the tiny isle of Tokelau has become the cybercrime centre of the world. A new report by an international group tackling internet scams has confirmed that Tokelau, a New Zealand territory, has more malicious registrations under its '.tk' domain name than any other domain except '.com'. These fraudulent web addresses are used for phishing, where emails are sent to random web addresses in an attempt to steal banking information and other personal details…’ Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April 2011. The Effects of Cybercrime 1.1 Countries at all stages of social, economic and technological development are experiencing the effects of revolutionary developments in information and communications technologies. Many effects are plainly beneficial. Families and commercial enterprises enjoy easy and rapid communication across the world. There is greater awareness (and hopefully better understanding) of other nations and cultures. But equally there are new opportunities for crime and the creation of new interests that can be threatened by crime. The increasing sophistication and speed of computer systems, and the convergence of information and communications technologies, enhance the capacity of technological change to benefit society, but also provide opportunities for those who seek to exploit the same capacity for criminal purposes. 1.2 Cybercrime at all levels of sophistication poses unprecedented challenges in terms of legislation, law enforcement, and policy-making. Law makers have to define and criminalise it. They have to craft provisions which facilitate the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime but also apply human rights norms in new and untested contexts. Their aim must be to provide stable national legal platforms for the international co-operation that is critical to effective national and international responses to the problem. 1.3 Law enforcement agencies have to acquire and maintain high degrees of technical sophistication and conduct high-speed international investigations without losing sight of the need to respect national sovereignty and fundamental rights. 1.4 Governments need to develop national strategies that include essential participants from outside the criminal justice community and from the private sector, and to find ways to co-operate with one another as never before. The Nature of Cybercrime National definitions 1.5 ‘Cybercrime’ is not a defined legal category, but a label that has been applied to a range of illicit activities associated with information and communications technologies and computer networks. For the purposes of this report, it includes: (a) a core cluster of criminal offences covering conduct that is harmful to computers, computer or communications systems, such as hacking, distribution of malware9, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, and other forms of interference with data or systems; and 9 Various forms of hostile or intrusive software including computer viruses, ransomware, worms, Trojan horses, rootkits, keyloggers, dialers and spyware. 11