Techies and Organised Crime
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Police and other agencies are concerned about the growing links between organised crime and the hacking community. A panel of legal and law enforcement officers at last weeks RSA Conference spelt out their fears. One researcher, Tim Rosenberg, of the George Washington University commented, "This is not about little Jimmy Smith breaking into his ex-employer's website and selling information to competitors," he said. "What we're seeing is just sheer, monstrous levels of crime." A US Justice Department official, Christopher, spoke of days past when hackers operated out "primarily out intellectual curiosity". Serious fraudsters have linked up with techies. ""What we've seen recently is a coming together of these two groups,"" said Painter. A classic example is the use of huge networks of computers, that have been compromised by spam borne malware. These can then be used to launder email offerings or launch distributed denial of service attacks. Whilst, amateur hackers still exist, they are fast becoming a minority according to Painter. They can still be dangerous though. It is just easier to deal with them. An example of the scale of the problem was Shadowcrew. An online forum for dealing in stolen credit card numbers to information sufficient to steal entire identities. To break the ring, anti-mafia style tactics had to be used including running informants within the organisation.
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