Cyber Crime Revenue to Fund Underground Expenses

Cyber crime has become so profitable that the criminals are using it to meet the cost of other organized underground operations, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney, Erez Liebermann, head of the computer hacking and intellectual property division in New Jersey's U.S. Attorney Office. Informationweek.com published this in news on July 20, 2007.

With computer crime, there are greater possibilities of earning given the inherent risks and gains. Organized crime is beginning to understand this. Liebermann said his team suspects the support of organized crime for certain cyber crime cases that they are probing, as published by Informationweek.com on July 20, 2007.

Some reports that the Attorney General has released highlight the connection between organized crime and terrorist operations that flourish through computer crime, intellectual property crimes, and hacking to raise funds that are spent to carry out other underground crime.

At Websense, a Web security company, analysts reported in late 2006 that the terrorist gangs are preparing to join with hackers this year to make a stronger, organized cyber crime association.

Widespread cyber crime attacks use crimeware or software created to aid in online scams where there is theft of consumer information and company data. This way, the software tools help to stir up revenue.

However, there are laws that focus on curbing such activity, said Liebermann. For instance, if the Cyber Security Enhancement Act gets through, penalties would increase and computer crime would be added to the lot of confirmed crimes giving way to a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act or Rico charge. Darkreading.com published this on July 20, 2007.

The current law enforcement is favorably equipped to deal with growing cyber crime. Cooperatives of online crime have started to buy, sell, and market ready-to-use toolkits for cyber attack, and exploit zero-day security flaws.

Organized groups have come to understand that there are still more resources that could be tapped to make financial gains, according to Dan Hubbard, VP of security research at Websense. Exploit codes and tools to grab personal, financial and business information are some hot products for online fraudsters, Hubbard commented as published by Informationweek.com.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

» SPAMfighter News - 8/3/2007