Australian hacker pandemic

The latest arrest of an Adelaide hacker is really just the tip of the iceberg says John Hillman.

News today an Australian hacker has been charged with infecting over 3,000 computers, in an attempt to capture banking and credit card data, will not come as a surprise to the Australian Computer Society.

Neither will the fact that he has been charged with creating a botnet of 74,000 computers. This was so that he could bombard systems around the world with unwanted web traffic.

Australia is in the grip of a wave of cyber-crime. Recent data revealed that the problem down-under is so great that you are now more likely to become a victim of cyber crime than burglary, assault or robbery.

Personally that’s no bad thing; forced to make a choice between having someone steal money from my account or coming face-to-face with a burglar at 3 a.m. I’m sure that most of us would choose the former. But it does highlight just how prevalent the problem has become.

Even though this man now faces being sentenced for up to 10 years each for each of his multiple crimes, the fact that he did it suggest that the possible gains from such activities outweigh the risks, in the criminal’s mind at least. Police believe that his arrest will soon lead to many others.

Things are so bad that the ACS’s Chairman, Kumar Parakala, recently said that cyber-crime in Australia was endangering their digital economy and had become:

“A major impediment to our further growth in this area, and requires a corresponding investment by Government and commercial interests to help Australians increase and maintain confidence in online transactions.”

This follows from last June when a major tax-refund scam targeted Australian taxpayers, directing them to a replica tax office website in an attempt to gain their personal information, in an activity known as phishing.

The problem has been caused, according to the ACS, by a general level of ignorance about cyber-security amongst the government, business community and the general public, making them soft targets for the organised criminal activities of the gangs. It is, said Parakala:

“…an unfortunate by-product of high speed, always on, internet services.”

Security software would go a long way to reducing these attacks by preventing hackers from accessing your PC and warning you when you are visiting bogus phishing websites.

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Image Credit: u07ch