From 4 to 7 September 2023, the Council of Europe, alongside Team Cymru, co-organised the Underground Economy Conference in Prague, Czech Republic. This prestigious international event convened around 500 experts representing law enforcement agencies, the cybersecurity community, private industry and academia from over 80 countries worldwide.  

Team Cymru CEO, Rob Thomas, prior to the event stated the importance of being able to meet physically and expand collaboration with the network as “building and maintaining our trusted communities without in-person events is very challenging.” Mr. Thomas added “every year we hear of investigations that have had a successful result partly because the relevant parties had already met at one of our Regional Internet Security Events or Underground Economy conferences.’’

In the face of the growing national and global threats of cybercrime to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, including attacks on critical infrastructures, ransomware, disinformation campaigns, malicious hacking and online child abuse, the Council of Europe plays a significant role, through the provisions offered by the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and its capacity building programs.

Given the challenges of obtaining electronic evidence for criminal cases when data is located in foreign, multiple or unknown jurisdictions, the audience was introduced to the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention that provides efficient mechanisms for cross-border cooperation, including direct collaboration between competent authorities and service providers in other countries.

The format of the four-day Underground Economy event is a series of presentations, talks and information sharing by practitioners, for practitioners.  This year, the record number of delegates that attended this highly vetted event could choose from over 60 workshops, presentations and information sharing talks. Technology providers gave use cases and shared techniques how to extract value from their offerings so that the audience could apply learnings in the real work to fight cybercrime. Furthermore, the Council of Europe organised two workshops on investigating digital crime scene in cases of online child abuse, which enhanced participants knowhow in collecting electronic evidence and identification of suspects.

The Underground Economy Conference is one manifestation of the Team Cymru mission: to save and improve human lives. It has been a prime example of cooperation against crime in the darknet, while the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention comes with effective means for cooperation across borders, including for direct cooperation with service providers in other Parties to the Convention.

As a sign that global cybercrime growth is a persistent challenge that isn’t slowing down, the Council of Europe and Team Cymru look forward to welcoming more delegates to 2024’s larger Underground Economy Conference.

  iPROCEEDS-2 project webpage

 GLACY+ project webpage

  CyberSouth project webpage

 Budapest Convention webpage

  Second Additional Protocol to the Cybercrime Convention webpage

  Team Cymru webpage