Technology investigative journalist and author Geoff White explores the growing sophistication of cyber criminals, from unlikely alliances between organised crime and nation states to the rise of cross-border money-laundering networks and AI-enabled attacks, and why good cyber hygiene is vital.
Hushpuppi, an Instagram influencer with around 2.8m followers, spent his life parading around in designer brands, travelling on private jets and staying in fancy hotels. He spent most of his days in the Palazzo Versace Hotel in Dubai, showing off his lavish lifestyle. But all was not as his online persona suggested; he was quietly laundering millions of US dollars for the North Korean government.
It seems like a strange combination: a communist nation with very little presence on social media, working with someone who lived a very public capitalist lifestyle. But it demonstrates how modern technology allows people from very different worlds to connect and collaborate.
“People who’d never have met before, are suddenly able to get together, establish common cause, and commit huge crimes,” says Geoff White, an investigative journalist at the nexus of organised crime and technology, and this year’s presenter of the Annual Cyber Lecture.
“I think Hushpuppi felt too big to fail: his profile was so big, so well connected, that it somehow protected him from the consequences of his crime. Turned out not to be the case.”
Hushpuppi, real name Ramon Abbas, is currently four years into a 135-month sentence in a US jail, following his arrest in 2020.
Cyber criminal behaviour
While AI is certainly a feature of cyber attacks, technology is largely opening up opportunities for more traditional techniques.
“In a lot of cases a cyber criminal’s way in is still phishing messages, emails, even LinkedIn and maybe WhatsApp. You’re going to start seeing more video calls and phone calls as part of that, because deepfake gives you the ability. The trajectory is still to find someone in the organisation, target them and trick them.”
Cyber criminals are not one-size-fits all; they mirror society, White explains, and so you will see a huge variety of behaviours and psychologies. He has written three books on cyber criminals and organised financial crime over the course of his career, including one on the North Korean hacker collective, the Lazarus Group.
“Particularly with international criminals working in cyber or on fraud, committing crimes worldwide, it can take law enforcement some time to catch up with them,” he explains. “And for all the time those people don’t get caught, they convince themselves that their story about themselves is true, because they’ve not been arrested and therefore must be a criminal mastermind. They don’t realise there’s an army of law enforcement chasing them.”
One common starting point for potential cyber criminals is video gaming. Young gamers can end up inadvertently breaking the law, committing crimes to give themselves a competitive advantage, or hacking a school friend’s account to steal pictures. “These are crimes, but those younger, lower level people often don’t realise it. Sometimes they continue on a path of criminality. Sometimes, they are spotted and groomed by crime gangs.”
Seasoned veterans and national actors
There are also serious, organised criminals, where the people involved have been at it for decades, White explains. “They understand exactly how it works.”
These criminals have a very developed business model and understood how to survive and thrive. “They are a constant threat.”
White says the “hardest criminal nut to crack” is nation-state activity mixed with organised crime.
“Hushpuppi was part of an organised crime infrastructure. The North Koreans found him on Telegram, we think, and reached out for help. He didn’t know initially he was working for a government able to make these sorts of links internationally.”
Economic sanctions give money laundering a boost
This ‘gun-for-hire’ model is proven to work. White foresees the expansion of this form of liaison globally.
“Increasingly, the geopolitical picture will have an economic element to it, and that will come mainly through the form of sanctions,” he says. “Economic warfare is going to be used. Now, if you’re the target, you need to respond in kind.”
The need to find alternative routes for money to move between nations will encourage more cyber crime connected with money laundering. It’s a crossover, says White, between fraudsters, cyber criminals, shadowy companies and governments. “We’ve already seen that happen.”
Criminals acting as ‘agencies’
Operation Destabilise, a National Crime Agency investigation, exposed a criminal organisation active in the UK in 2025. It allegedly served ‘clients’ such as the Kremlin and sanctioned Russians, drug dealing gangs in the UK and cartels in South America, as well as one ransomware operation. The criminal enterprise is actually accused of purchasing a bank in Kyrgyzstan, providing sanction evasion services to the Russian state. “Astonishing. And that points to the future, I think,” White says.
This cross-border cyber crime money laundering approach acts like an ‘agency’; dealing with each client ‘account’, while combining their financial spoils in one massive fund, to avoid traceability.
Getting the basics right
A lot of problems will still be solved by sorting out the basics, he adds. Education, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and thinking about your suppliers and supply chain.
“Keep running on those basic things and use new technology like AI to do a better job on those basics. Use AI to audit your organisation and see who hasn’t got MFA switched on. Work out your employees’ behavior when they log on and when they don’t; use AI to block emails when they don’t log on or to spot suspicious activity.
“It’s using the latest technology, but to solve the oldest problems.”
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