The acsent of cybercrime
The days of thieves scraping by on a few thousand pounds of week, whilst putting themselves and the public in great danger, are at an end, says John Hillman . A new breed of digital crook rules the big money crime leagues and they’ve swapped the sawn off shot guns for laptops.
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The Internet has given rise to a new breed of thief capable of stealing money on a scale of previously unimaginable proportions. Whereas the Great Train Robbery of 1963 made household names of men like Buster Edwards and Ronnie Biggs, for the theft of a mere£2.6 million, today’s cyber-criminals are making that sort of money every day without even leaving their living rooms.
Take last week’s story from the US: 28 year old Albert Gonzalez, a.k.a. “the soupnazi”, pleaded guilty to 19 counts of theft, for hacking into a number of well-known US firms, exploiting flaws in their security systems, and making off with over 40 million credit card details.
Once in possession of the information he sold most of the credit card details on to other crooks, but only after saving the choicest ones for himself. He cloned these ones and used them to withdraw the sort of cash your average 60s bank robber could only dream of.
Gonzalez is facing 45 years behind bars. The fact that he previously escaped jail back in 2003 for his role as a member of the “Shadow Crew” , by becoming an informant against his fellow thieves, means that he can expect little mercy from the courts when they come to sentence him in December.
However, around the world there are possibly thousands more unscrupulous individuals happy to step into his shoes. In Eastern Europe there are gangs reportedly making around $34 million a month through cyber-crime, and the CEO of McAfee, David DeWatt, hit the news last week when he announced that cybercrime has now officially overtaken the drugs trade in terms of overall value, believing it to be worth a staggering $105 billion.
With over 3 million Britons becoming victims of cyber-crime each year it looks like we are all going to have to face up to the dark reality of this digital age, and it’s about time we do; one of the biggest reasons that it has become so huge is that many of us simply don’t take the problem that seriously.
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Image credit: Tracy O