BusinessWeek on Hacker Hunters

prostoalex writes "You keep hearing about FBI, Secret Service or other law enforcement authorities involved in pursuing international cybercrime gangs, but who are those people and how does the cyberlaw enforcement work? Business Week talks about hacker hunters and people they're after. A large portion of the article is dedicated to describing the global scope of such activities with Russia, Eastern Europe and China leading the ranks for criminal hideouts."

Comments

The Hacker is the problem

[John Seminal]

Some might say...

The hacker does not respect intellectual property. When they buy a gadget, they think they own it and the intellectual property that went into it. They think they can reverse engineer it. They are breaking laws by doing so.

I never thought hacker was a good and positive term. Hacker sounds like some worthless criminal, some shady person who can't exist in sunlight or normal society. It is like a person who hides and tries to catch your PIN number, so they can steal.

A better word would be explorer. Explorers and scientists act within the law. They change opinion. Hackers have not changed any opinions, they just piss people off.

What if Microsoft releases an OS with weak security? What will the hacker do? Write worms and viruses exploiting it. They will not just let people be. They will frustrate everyone, like they are expecting a reward that they found something. So what. They are jackholes.

Re:The Hacker is the problem

[Stonehand]

While this undoubtably astounds you, the mere fact that thrill may motivate somebody more than profit does not remove responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, or the possible immorality thereof.

To take an extreme example of your argument -- the popular, if utterly bogus, "slippery slope" approach -- your argument would suggest that murder, if committed for thrills but not money, is simply dandy. Less severely, it would justify breaking into peoples' homes if nothing were stolen or physically damage, despite the fact that this too can have substantial consequences (in this case, psychological). It's actually worse in the case of computers because it's more difficult to do a thorough yet precise assessment of what exactly has been compromised, which is why locking down the system followed by auditing, reinstallation and patching should be done if anything important was there at all.

The fact is, an unauthorized intrusion into a system has severe consequences -- regardless of its motivation. So does the authoring and releasing of compromises without sufficient warning to those vulnerable or in a position to ameliorate said vulnerabilities. A worm, released, does damage based on its code, not the author's intent; recall the RTM worm, for instance.

Re:Pfft. They care so much.

[John Seminal]

As someone who works in the security field and comes across hacked systems all the time, I'll believe they give a damn when they start returning my calls. Sounds like PR to get someone more funding. Trying to get someone at the FBI to care when you come across bot networks at an ISP, bank, or even a power company is next to impossible.

The FBI needs more funding. They only have 5 billion dollars. That is not even 1 dollar for every person in the world. ;)

What would worry me more than the FBI tracking hackers is what happened at that library yesterday. They now have fingerprint machines at every computer, and you can't use the library without getting your finger scanned.

That worries me, because the government is now in a position to control ideas. They can see who reads Lenin. They can make a list.

The hacker on the other hand, he is a criminal. He breaks into stuff. He is not just reading a book and thinking to himself. He is breaking into other peoples property.

That is a crime that deserves more law enforcement funding.

The next step is for the USA to help fund a prision in pakastan, so the USA won't be bothered keeping prisioners up to USA standards (like the right to a lawyer or 3 meals a day), but at the same time the arrests will not overburden forieng nations. I say we should build a 10,000 cell prision in the desert, without any air conditioning, and limited water. That should break just about anyone.