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More IT Pros Could Turn To E-Crime In Poor Economy
snydeq writes to mention that a recent survey by KPMG shows that many people feel that out-of-work IT workers will be much more tempted to turn to criminal activities due to the down economy. This, coupled with an E-crime survey that shows fraud committed by managers, employees, and customers tripled between 2007 and 2008 paints an interesting picture. "In other survey results, 45 percent of respondents who handle critical national infrastructure said they are seeing an increase in the number of attacks on their systems. Fifty-one percent of respondents from the same category said the technical sophistication of those attacks is getting better. Sixty-eight percent said that of all kinds of malicious code they felt Trojan horse programs — ones that are designed to look harmless but can steal data along with other functions — had the most impact on their businesses. Rootkits are the next highest concern, followed by spyware, worms, viruses, mobile malicious code and, finally, adware."
This is kind of a duh thing, isn't it? When the economy goes south, crime of all sorts that leads to profit increases. There just happens to be a lot of people out there with enough background knowledge in IT to make a profit off of criminal acts in IT.
Financial Pros already managed to turn crime into a poor economy.
Once a person out of desperation, or greed, turns to crime to make money for the necessities of life; it is only natural that they use whatever skills they have to the task. An increase in unemployment among IT professionals, and a tough job-marked all around, this sort of development don't surprise me.
The Long Now Foundation
Financial Pros already managed to turn crime into a poor economy.
And it has fallen upon our shoulders to turn the poor economy back into a haven for profitable crime!
I, for one, humbly, selflessly, and with a strong sense of duty accept this honor on behalf profession and my country; nay, the world! The VIjAGRA e-tailers are calling our names!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Quickly before this thing explodes any further.
I googled for the ecrime howto but couldn't find it. Link please.
things get that bad I'm turning to drug manufacturing. anyone with half a brain can do it, and finding ingredients/instructions is dirt simple.
"You have two options: unemployment or early retirement."
So if 45% says the attacks are on the rise that means 55% said attacks are getting less or equally frequent, right? The 51% is pretty much the same thing. Some analysis you got there.
At least we are doing it because we are desperate. Politician do it for fun.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Mr. Joe Plomber
Representative, Accounting Department.
AIG, United States
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Aha! I always knew IT people were the scourge of society.
The DarkSide of the force is a pathway to many abilities; some consider to be unnatural.
What do they expect? IT staff that got their jobs outsourced to India to break into their old companies systems and fix the crud written by the people who got their jobs before they'd finished paying off their college loans?
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
I'm not buying this story at all. I live and work in Silicon Valley. I do see lots of folks getting laid off at a higher rate than in the past. At the same time, I see the same folks quickly finding new work. Sometimes it involves a pay cut, often it does not. I just don't see IT in this area being affected as deeply as other professions in other parts of the country. It is not bad enough in IT that good people are turning to lives of crime to make ends meet.
sum 1 stolz my m3ga hurtz!
The problem is all inside your head, my manager said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
Id like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your employer
He said its really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning wont be lost or misconstrued
But Ill repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your employer
Fifty ways to leave your employer
Just slip a virus out the back, jack
Make a new botnet plan, stan
You dont need to be coy, roy
Just get yourself free with stolen accounts!
Hop on the ddos bus, gus
You dont need to discuss much
Just drop off the encryption key, lee
And get yourself free
He said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
why the fuck you laid me off
He said why dont we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning youll begin to see the light
And then he blew me off and I realized he probably was right
There must be fifty ways to leave your employer
Fifty ways to leave your employer
Also, there is no suck thing as "E-Crime".
No suck thing? Freudian slip? So what's on YOUR mind?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZXEatfhSk
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
ePrison for committing an eCrime.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wonder whether anyone trying to earn anything trough black hattery will find it easy in those tough times. I'm sure not all parts of the world have been hit equally and so becomming an international criminal could become even more of a necessity for the so inclined. Maybe they should try getting some of that money back from Nigeria.
I also have doubts that SPAM is going be on the upturn and I guess the article already makes clear that people who were smart enough to not make the obvious financial mistakes will be the target, "The reality is we are seeing more sophisticated attacks aimed at sophisticated people."
What I'm wondering is whether it makes any sense for employed people to steal from their employer, sixty percent of all people thought that their colleagues would do that, but that doesn't mean much. They probably were overly pessimistic just to be on the safe side. I mean the real world isn't like Office Space.
Je me souviens.
1.) Work a few years. 2.) Wait for recession. ... ... ...
6.) Profit.
"malicious code that looks harmless"
If you go to the trouble of looking at the actual code, what is the point of letting it run if it looks harmless? (other than xkcd)
that tagged this story "eHamburglar", but I want to thank you. For whatever reason, that struck me so funny that I laughed out loud...so loudly that I can only truly call it a "guffaw", and as a result, everyone within earshot of my office is convinced I'm off my meds.
you are so silly... the only difference is that on difficult times you see who "is" and who "is not"
The United States of America is becoming more fascist with its bailout of the financial institution elites.
Call this 1-800-FUC-KGOPvoice your concern and stop the rampant SOCIALISM that is eroding the presence of NASCAR, Rush Limbaugh, and the NRA.
Yours In Capitalism,
Kilgore Trout
Ok, so they ask if attacks are increasing, and 45% say they are, presumably meaning 55% said no. That's an increase? That sounds like a decrease.
51% say the technical sophistication is increasing? Well, as time goes on, technology gets more sophisticated. It seems like attacks would follow that trend too.
This doesn't sound like a real story, it sounds like someone coming up with an idea and trying to make the statistics sound right. Didn't Mark Twain say something about lies, d*mn lies and statistics?
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Let's see:
1. Attacks are getting more sophisticated. Is this really unexpected? As countermeasures are developed against existing attacks, they have to get more sophisticated.
2. "...many people feel that out-of-work IT workers will be much more tempted..."; duh. Ask John Q. Public if X worker in Y field might be tempted to commit crimes against the field they have experience in when the econmic pressure is on, and Mr. Public will always say yes.
TFA doesn't actually actually say anything about out of work IT people actually turning to crime or link crime to the economy in any meaningful way.
Look at how mired in poorly functioning, slow, useless software the entire IT world is. These guys could bring about the end of crime....
My story submission: "Hello. I am an out-of-work IT worker and will be much more tempted to turn to criminal activities due to the down economy. Can someone please give me some pointers? Thanks."
Problem solved.
and financial executives.
oh, wait....
If I had a buyer for it, I'd definitely sell my company's data for whatever I could get for it. Hell, I'd give them Administrator accounts on my Active Directory network if they asked and paid for it.
Having my department's budget slashed to where I literally can no longer deploy new workstations or printers because we don't have sufficient surge protectors to plug them into or enough wall outlets, my employees fired to where I am now doing the job of about four people, and being made to work 70-hour work weeks on salary are terribly frustrating. Oh, and they're only paying me 40% of the average salary for the market I live in yet the company routinely spends thousands upon thousands of dollars per week in wasted fuel, electricity, and even outright money as I watched one of our customer service agents discard an entire case of blank magnetic cards (~1000) because she spilled coke on the outside cardboard box and didn't want to clean it up. The cards wouldn't even have been touched!
Nobody else is hiring, I can't get a raise, and my savings run out after this month. My current job pays less money than my rent, utilities, car and food monthly cost to say nothing about having "disposable income" that I hear so much about these days. My savings will be dry after having let me survive being "under-employed" for the last 6 month; I had about 3 total months worth of expenses saved up when the job trouble started. I have two months of available credit after that. Then, I'm living in my van or a storage unit, or something.
My friends are all very sympathetic, and have all volunteered that I can do couch rotations for a day or two at a time if it goes that way but that's only marginally better. None of them are in a position to lend me money, not that I'd ever allow them to do that anyway. And my family can't either.
I can't get another job because I'm already working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week -- I guess I could replace "sleep" with "work" but that won't hold for more than a week or so. I guess if I get really desperate, I could sell my car for the ~9k I can get for it and that'll buy me some more time.
In conclusion: Yes. This is happening. And there's probably nothing anyone can do about it.
Like those CEOs who are making a reaping despite the bad economy opening some rootkit and exposing information. That's a legit worry.
If an IT guy is going to turn bad, they would've done that a long time ago. They're in the best position to avoid detection anyways.
So 45 percent of respondents said that they are seeing an increasing number of attacks? HOW MUCH are they increasing? If 45% of respondents said that attacks are up 0.01%, I don't really care. Way to not give me enough information to form an opinion, article...
"There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode, and high speed pizza delivery."
The former hedge-fund managers are hogging all the pizza delivery jobs, guess that means the coders are going to have to stick with crimes you can prepend with "cyber."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Of course I didn't RFA, but I did read another recent article that stated IT unemployment was just shy of %2, and really hasn't fluctuated much with the recent downturn. With the assumption that the less then %2 aren't necessarily nefarious, I contend that this position is a bit detached from reality.
With higher online education and easier access to breaking tools - and a certain amount of social support for it (popular) - I think it's the folks who have too much time on their hands doing it. Now my experiences were working with ISPs in a small town with high income rates - and nothing for anyone to do - so everyone had computers and did online stuff. Hacking attempts were higher there than I've even seen working for a stock-exchange feed company (which got hit at the same level, scale and pressure as an international bank).
I think it's firmly in the hands of a populace with too much time and not enough to do - a populace who's gotten tired of TV and wants to do something with a "concrete" result but without too much in the way of repercussions (as they understand it). A little feeling of empowerment and a society that suggests there's nothing wrong with it.
The basic tools are widely available and most people (especially younger) have access and sufficient education to use them. I don't see any reason to blame high-tech workers for something that does not need high-tech worker education.
(what real e-crime I saw on an internal level were from people who worked sales, management and related - not tech. I've seen this in a few companies btw so no one read any specific organization out of it)
I personally consider it comparable to breaking and entering - but then it's harder to identify who's doing it so it's hard to have any consequences.
I wonder how much money the likes of Symantec, Kaspersky, and so on, have to spend on these articles...
'Cause that seems to always be the punchline: be afraid, be very afraid, and let the nice security experts worry about it... for a nominal fee, of course.