Control and Diversity: Cyber terrorism and cyber fraud.
Most hackers are politically motivated and do not seek personal gain that is their aim, as with early maverick film makers is to subvert and undermine attempts to impose control on the medium's content. Their targets are same as is commonplace in conventional terrorism -the State and the Corporate Sector.
Probably the most notorious case is of Acid Phreak and Fiber Optik in- July 9,1992 Federal officials indicted five people in New York City for computer crime. The indictments name Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Julio Fernandez (Outlaw), John Lee (Corrupt), Elias Ladopoulos (Acid Phreak), and Paul Stria (Scorpion). The indictments charge that the accused used their computers to access credit bureaus, other computer systems, and make free long-distance calls.
Prosecutors revealed they relied on court-approved wiretaps to obtain much of the evidence for their multiple-count indictment for wire fraud, illegal wiretapping and conspiracy. Each count is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The defendants were scheduled to be arraigned in Manhattan Federal Court on July 16. If found guilty on all counts the defendants could face a maximum term of 50 years in prison and fines of $2.5 million.
In the event Phiber was sentenced to a 12-month prison sentence (plus three years' probation and 600 hours of service),-a real a slap in the face, and ECHO (the ISP he then worked for) responded with a massive outburst of dismay and sympathy. ECHO's director, Stacy Horn, posted the information at 3 p.m. on November 3 in the system's main conference area, and within 24 hours the place was flooded with over 100 messages offering condolences, advice on penitentiary life, and curses on Judge Stanton. Not all the messages were what you'd want to call articulate, nor was all the advice exactly comforting (``Try not to get killed,'' a sincere and apparently quite prison-savvy Echoid suggested; ``Skip the country,'' proposed one user who connects from abroad, inviting Phiber to join him in sunny South Africa). But the sentiment throughout was unmistakably heartfelt, and when Phiber Optik finally checked in, his brief response was even more so: ``I just finished reading all this and...I'm speechless. I couldn't say enough to thank all of you.''
Other forms of Cyber terrorism are routinely carried out by governments by for example bombarding enemy governments sites with spurious emails and the creation of shadow sites filled with satire or plain disinformation. During the 2003 war in Iraq there was believable evidence that the US State department and the CIA subjected the arabic news service Al Jazeera's site to a denial of service attack. Despite this, or perhaps because of it the reputation of the news organisation has been enhanced internationaly to the extent that their coverage of the war has garnered awards. (Article here)
As more and more consumers transact business via the Internet cyber fraud is becoming more and more common.
WASHINGTON, DC . . . Internet fraud reports are on the rise. According to Internet Fraud Watch, operated by the National Consumers League, complaints have increased 600 percent since 1997. Online auction complaints were the number one fraud complaint in 1998. Auctions were first in 1997 with 26 percent of the total frauds reported, but increased to an alarming 68 percent in 1998.
"More people are online, and more people are getting scammed," said Susan Grant, Director of the Internet Fraud Watch. "Consumers need to remember that con artists are everywhere -- even in cyberspace."
The majority of fraudulent payments were made "offline" by check or money order sent to the company. "Requesting cash is a clear sign of fraud," says Grant. "Pay the safest way. If possible, say by credit card because you can dispute the charges if there is a problem."
For the most aprt the victims of these fraudulent activities are complicit in in their own downfall. One of the best known scams is the African money laudering con, in which the greed of the victim is exploited by promising incredible riches for their cooperation in illegally importing currency from one corrupt government offical or another. So motivated by the inducment of fast money for no effort, the victims willingly divulge financial information - only to find that their accounts have been plundered. (more here)
These obvious scams are the most common cyber crime but not the most lucrative. Large scale corporate fraud has occurred (and is occurring). Supposedly closed secure electronic funds transfer systems have been hacked and funds misappropriated to anonymous offshore accounts operated by multi-national organised crime. The banks and other institutions that have been and are are the victims of such fraud take great care to not to divulge this information so the scale of the fraud is unknown and unreported. With at least a billion terabytes of financial data passed electronically around the every twenty four hours the potential for the technologically equipped to misdirect a proportion of this to their own gain is obvious.
That the institutions that become victims of such fraud take more care to conceal the crime than to prevent or prosecute the fraudsters illustrates their complicity. Their motives are of course deception of their customers. They wish their corporate and individual customers to believe that their systems are secure, stable and unable to be infiltrated when this is patently not the case. This the reason, of course, that we can not even guess at the scale of such activities and any estimate would be little more than a guess. It is undeniably the case however that Russian based organised crime operated a fraud in the early 90's, with the collusion of a pair of professional hackers that netted them at least $40million by transferring funds to and from the US and Latin America. My suggestion is that this is far more common and widespread than we will ever be able to discover.
Postscript- Do biometric ID cards make "identity theft" more difficult....
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