Every fortnight, the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe (C-PROC) publishes its CyberDigest, a newsletter that provides a global outlook on matters related to the “aims, activities and achievements” of C-PROC. The newsletter is a collection of internally and externally published press releases and news articles, covering a wide swath of topics and events.
The Council of Europe and C-PROC
The Council of Europe (CoE) is an international body dedicated to promoting democracy, the rule of law, and human rights across Europe. Having identified the increasing legal challenges that the internet and computer technology would present, the CoE established C-PROC (which went into force in 2014) with the intention of helping countries respond to cybercrime challenges.
CyberDigest
The most recent digest was published on 15 May 2025 and included 15 articles, whose contents and subject matter could be broken down into four themes:
- Workshops
- Policy and Legislation
- Databases
- Cooperation
Definitions
Budapest Convention
A comprehensive international treaty designed to help signatories improve local cybercrime legislation, investigation techniques, and criminal justice capacities.
CyberSEE
A joint project between Turkey and Southeast Europe to become more compliant with Budapest Convention provisions – especially with regards to cybercrimes and electronic evidence.
CyberEast+
Built upon the foundations of original CyberEast joint project that ran from 2019 to 2023, CyberEast+ aims to help partner countries be more compliant with the Budapest Convention and its protocols.
Combination List
A combination list, or combo list, is a (text) file of usernames, email addresses, and passwords that have been assembled from website breaches and security leaks to be sold online.
Workshops
- CyberSEE, in conjunction with the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the European Union, held a Cybercrime Strategy in Serbia (2025-2030) workshop, to address future strategies and goals to ultimately have Serbia in sync with the Budapest Convention and Second Protocol.
- As reported by Interpol, experts from financial crime and law enforcement agencies across Africa gathered at a workshop to learn about and implement Interpol’s recently announced silver notice.
- Over 800 stakeholders and representatives from justice, civil society, and law attended the 2025 Pan-European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) session hosted by the Council of Europe, to discuss the theme of ‘Safeguarding human rights by balancing regulation and innovation’.
- Criminal justice specialists and representatives from CyberSEE were brought together at a domestic expert workshop in Sarajevo to discuss and review legislation and protocols necessary to assist Bosnia and Herzegovina in becoming a signatory of the Budapest Convention and Second Additional Protocol.
- An intermediate level training workshop on cybercrime investigations and computer forensics was run by CyberEast+ for officials, trainers, and staff at the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (NAIA).
Policy and Legislation
- The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit responsible for coordinating the internet’s naming system, released a policy status report for public comment and review on the current strengths, weaknesses, and performance of the expired domain deletion policy (EDDP) and expired registration recovery policy (ERRP).
- The European Parliament reported that members of parliament on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee met to approve changes to legislation that would better combat child sex abuse.
Cooperation
- As reported by Europol, coordination action from authorities in Belgium, Spain, and Austria undertook a takedown of a criminal network engaged in criminal parallel banking and money laundering activities.
- The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation reported that an international coalition consisting of Albania, Cyprus, Israel, Germany, and the UK dismantled an organised crime group engaging in fraud via a fraudulent online investment platform.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office, on behalf of the Northern District of Oklahoma announced in a press release that its collaboration with the FBI and authorities from Virginia, the Netherlands, and Thailand resulted in an illegal botnet being dismantled.
- Europol announced that authorities from Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, and the U.S. worked together to arrest individuals running an illegal distributed denial of service (DDOS) for-hire platform.
- The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) announced that Me, the registry service responsible for managing Montenegro’s country code top-level domain (.me) has become a member of the IWF, to help reduce the dissemination of child sex abuse imagery online and domain hopping.
- The UK’s national law enforcement agency, the National Crime Agency, reported that following a collaboration with policing, technology, and safeguarding partners, they arrested a member of the CVLT ‘com’ network for disclosing combo lists and distributing indecent images of children.
Databases
- The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) reported that it has created a Vulnerability Database designed to provide data on information and communication technology (ICT) products and services with vulnerabilities (eg descriptions and severity of identified problems) and guidance on resolving any issue that is identified.
- The European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) recently celebrated the third anniversary of its online resource system, Better Internet for Kids.
Key Takeaways
The fortnightly CyberDigest provides a global outlook on matters C-PROC considers important and which also promote its aims, achievements, and activities, as well as putting on display thematically relevant global news stories that highlight the importance of up-to-date cybersecurity policies, legislation, training, and education.
