"Hacker" is actually
By Vladimir Golubev
Date: May 22, 2003
Nowadays, hacker is an extremely actual concept. Recently, special services of the USA arrested 130 person suspected in hacking. Arrest became a result of operation "E-Con", which has been carried out by FBI, Secret Service, Customs Service and other federal law enforcement bodies in 43 states and the adjoining countries. In total suspected are brought to 90 cases with 89 thousand victims who have lost more than $17 million.
Besides the mentioned operation, federal agents have arrested 50 people in addition and 12 people have been recognized guilty.
The U.S. Ministry of Defense has published the statistical data, according to which it has been fixed about 45 thousand hacker's attacks to U.S. military networks in 2002. Hackers tried to get the control over military servers near 200 times, and some hundreds times they attacked military networks with the help of computer viruses. Intrusions into U.S. military networks have made more than thirds of total cyberattacks on the U.S. network in 2002.
South Korea is interested in hackers fight also. According to SK general Song Young-keun, South-Korean authorities seriously believe, that Northern Korea develops not only the nuclear weapon, but also trains hackers for attack on SK information infrastructure.
According to research firm Gartner, most of all Internet scammers live in USA, Romania, Nigeria, Great Britain, Canada, Republic of South Africa, Togo, Indonesia, Australia and Russia. But real "epidemic" of the Internet fraud is distributed in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Israel, Indonesia and Pakistan. Use of the false or stolen credit cards is the most popular in these countries.
The majority of scammers prefer to steal gradually. In 32 % of cases scammers manage to steal $100 - $499^; in 18 % - $1 000 - $3 000^; in 5,4 % - $3 000 - $5 000^; in 2,4 % - $5 000 -10 000^; in 2,5 % of cases - more than $10 000.
And here is a concrete example of Russian cybercrime. The group of Russian hackers cracked sites of the large computer companies and blackmailed their supervisions. Thus Russians demanded either the ransom, or the help in search a job in the USA. They attacked such companies as E-money, PayPal, Western Union and regional banks. As a result of smart operation FBI has enticed hackers into the USA and has arrested. They have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and large penalties.
Computer Crime Research Center
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