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

The new mercenaries

[Billosaur]

Hackers are the 21st Century equivalent of the mercenary. Pay them enough money and they will do what you want. As long as someone somewhere feels the need to crack a database or extract sensitive information from some business/person, there will hackers ready to answer the call. Crack down on them, and all you do is reduce their number, weeding out the weak ones, and leaving a highly competitive and lucrative market for the strong ones.

I know that we've already lost the war...

[Lord Kano]

The war for the meaning of the word "hacker", but come on now. If whatever you're doing is not for the satisfaction of the accomplishment, you're not really a hacker.

It's kind of like the distinction between a slut and a whore. Sluts do it because they enjoy it, whores do it for financial gain.

LK

Feds & Prosecuters don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

Several years ago we filed a case with the FBI over an issue where a spammer hacked into our system. We gathered logs and had details on exactly where they came from and where they were operating. In this case it was an American. We had overwhelming evidence of credit card fraud, hacking major networks, as well as computer tampering and lots of monetary damage and interruption of e-commerce. We did most of the work -- the FBI basically collected the information we provided and did little investigating of their own, and then presented the case to the attorney general in two separate jursidictions, at which point our case was blown off. No wonder the hacker/spammers aren't scared. The authorities are apathetic and unmotivated to prosecute people in these fields when they clearly break the law. The exception seems to be if you're a child who has annoyed a very large corporation.

Re:I smell a business opportunity.

[bberens]

Hammurabi's code had laws like "If you steal something form the temple, you will be put to death." A simple risk/profit analysis would indicate that stealing something from the temple is probably not worth it. However, 'hacking' on the internet is relatively low risk of getting caught and the punishments are relatively small. People will generally act within their own best interest and the legal ramifications are only one part of the consequences of action. In the case of home robbery, there's the shotgun blast to the face consequence on top of the legal ramifications. In the case of hacking, unless you hack the mob/FBI/CIA/IRS you're unlikely to find yourself in a 'car accident.'