Hackers Not Afraid of Being Caught

An anonymous reader wrote in to point us to an interview with Honeynet Founder Lance Spitzner where he says "Years ago it was hackers who were doing it for the bragging rights, now it's the criminals. The motivation has changed, hacking is now profitable and there's so much money to be made with very little risk to the actual hackers."

Comments

I smell a business opportunity.

[dada21]

Of course hacking is profitable -- the laws of supply and demand cover this as any service or product. The laws making hacking illegal only add more gold to the pot. For acts considered criminal, the value to the service provider will still meet what the market dictates. In this case, the chance of getting caught is low, so hacking might not be as profitable as selling pot, but it also depends on the demand. If hackers are making money, that means there is a demand for their service. If only a few hackers are willing to take the risk, a high demand and low supply of service providers means a high cost/profit. That's the nature of the free market.

Yet I don't think this profit will necessarily last forever -- even if laws change to make it easier to catch a hacker and even if the penalties are raised. The Internet is global, not local. With more third party countries gaining Internet access and more people willing to invest the time to learn to hack, I believe hackers will find their jobs outsourced as quickly as call centers and web developers have. So what?

The State will write laws to defend against hacking, but the reality is that the free market will provide better defense. There are laws against breaking and entering, but do they work? No, locks do. In situations where locks don't work, alarms work. In situations where alarms aren't enough, a Colt 45 used once usually fixes that situation. The law has almost no effect on crime other than raising the profit for those willing to take the risk. Hackers make a profit only means that anti-hackers have a new business opportunity -- and if you're good with security, you should make a windfall NOW before the law interferes with YOUR ability to secure your clients. Regulations against hacking might harm you more than they harm the "criminals."

Take advantage of this business opportunity today -- on either side of the "battle."

Re:I smell a business opportunity.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

First of all the novelty of an alarm system is notification of the police, who job it is to *gasp* uphold the law.

This is untrue. The chances of the police responding in time to do anything is very slim. The main purpose is to alert the owner and other people nearby, thus increasing the risk of this particular robbery or crime. It is the job of the police to investigate crimes, but they have neither the manpower or the will to prevent crime.

There are plenty of processionals that can or profession demands the ability to pick locks, bypass alarm systems and assault a building in a manner that would make a gun have very little effect.

Relative to the general populace or to the criminal populace, this just isn't true. Locks are easy to pick, alarm systems can be bypassed, but very few criminals take the time to do either when there are easier targets.

Perhaps the knowledge that maybe losing a chunk of your life to jail may put some second thoughts into these people.

Threat of punishment is a motivational factor, but surprisingly, not a very significant one. Studies have shown people in general believe they can get away with crimes without being caught. The main motivation for not committing them is actually a moral one. People do not feel justified in robbery. One of the strongest correlations with robbery and violent crime worldwide is wealth disparity. In places where some people are very poor and others are very rich, despite the rich not necessarily working harder or being smarter than the poor, the rates of these crimes is higher. It is easy to justify robbery when you were born into debt while others were born into extreme wealth. And that is exactly what people do.

Re:I smell a business opportunity.

[xappax]

OK, I hate government just as much as you, but on this matter it seems like you don't really know what you're talking about.

You claim that tighter laws and enforcement against computer criminals will encourage computer crime by driving down the supply of willing "workers". While this may jive with your anarcho-capitalist theory, it just ain't true.

The entire point of the article was that hacking is prevalent because there isn't serious enforcement of the law. The author points out that criminals use insecure methods of communication, not even bothering to conceal themselves, because they're confident that the law won't touch them. If the governments in eastern europe cracked down on internet crime, and actively investigated and arrested computer criminals, many of the current participants would be scared out of the game, no longer confident that they're above the law. There is a threshold of risk beyond which very few people are willing to go, even for a huge reward, and this is even more true of a job that requires in-depth training and is inaccessible to the vast majority of people.

There are plenty of good reasons to oppose cyber-crime crackdowns, and I for one do, but the argument you're making in this case is naive to both the technical and economic realities of international computer crime.

Oh for crap's sake..

[Rob T Firefly]

Being a hacker is not a punishable offense. If criminals are using so-called "hacker" skills in criminal pursuits, they're still criminals. Call them criminals.

I'd expect the OMG SCARY word "hacker" to be misused like this in Hollywood films and mainstream news, but not on Slashdot of all places.

Re:Oh for crap's sake..

[B11]

[blockquote] Being a hacker is not a punishable offense. [/blockquote] Not yet anyways. But being a tinkerer and an "outside-the-box" thinker, non-comformist, etc is certainly NOT something being encouraged today, vis-a-vis things like the DMCA, the Patriot Act, etc, etc. Kinda sad actually.