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Security Attacks Increasingly Motivated By Greed
earthstar writes "E-commerce has emerged as the "single most targeted industry" according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report from security software provider Symantec, with hackers now appearing to be motivated by economic gain rather than notoriety.
"We're seeing an increase in profit-motivated attacks," says Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec's virus research team. Also in
Information week"
It was discovered recently, that majority of activities of humans are driven by economic gain ...
...being a l337 hax0r isn't good enough for some people.
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Many "kiddies" start out to "see what they can see" and end up stumbling upon something they perceive as serendipitous: a database of credit card numbers, a company's financial statements, etc. Once just curious, they "see green" and the gears start churning. Before too long they are making purchases with credit card numbers not theirs and/or they're trying to threaten/extort/blackmail a company into paying them money so they'll not release some damning information they've uncovered.
So for those who advocate the freedom to "see what I can see" take note of the small leap toward real criminal behavior....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Is it Obvious Day on /. or am I just crazy?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I disagree entirely with the conclusions the media proposes on a regular basis. I suppose being a moderator of a "script kiddie" security forum (or so it has been called by those that don't like our audience) at www.governmensecurity.org means that I'm out of the loop as to what true hackers are doing.
The reality is that North and South American hackers are primarily motivated to participate in FXP, or file-sharing using their compromised computers. Russian hackers work with US companies to sell spam drones. German hackers do a mix of both but mainly use their computers to compromise more. Canadians DDoS other hackers. I don't intend to generalize, but it is important to note that the primary objective here is *still* file sharing.
Sites like www.packetnews.com and the like have XDCC searches that help people find free software, like Sims2 the week it comes it. Some movies come out before they are in theatre. I remember seeing Mr. Deeds a month before it came out and Signs about two weeks before it came out.
You don't get that kind of dedication from most hackers. In fact, I would venture to guess that the Russian groups that are doing the majority of the spambot installations have one or two knowledgable people in them, and that is essentially it. The others that work with them are just trying to siphon money. Still, there are a good deal of them with 0-day IE exploits, but unfortunately they haven't been well to adapt to one of the changes Microsoft made blocking an easy way to get files to your computer.
Now, if these guys were bright, they'd keep using the same method and just change the registry so that they can use that method. But it would appear that they don't know how to do that. SP2 also seems to be causing some trouble.
Five years ago, if you were l33t (= had a few technical skills you could show off), you could work for a .com and get big bucks just for showing up. Now that most .coms are .deads, getting money for technical skills is harder.
It makes sense that as legit jobs are harder to get, some people, especially those who got addicted to the easy money, will look for non legit work.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
When times are good, crime is not attractive. But when things are really doing bad, crime becomes more and more attractive...