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Hacking News:

Kevin Mitnick
-----Who pleaded guilty to a series of federal offences related to a 2½-year computer hacking spree, was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison, United States Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced.
Mitnick, 37, pleaded guilty in March to four counts of wire fraud, two counts of computer fraud and one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication. Mitnick's prolific and damaging hacking career, which made him the most wanted computer criminal in United States history, was ended when he was arrested in North Carolina in February 1995.
In a global plea agreement filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, Mitnick admitted that he broke into a number of computer systems and stole proprietary software belonging to Motorola, Novell, Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems and other companies. Mitnick admitted using a number of tools to commit his crimes, including "social engineering," cloned cellular telephones, "sniffer" programs placed on victims’ computer systems and hacker software programs.
As part of his scheme, Mitnick acknowledged altering computer systems belonging to the University of Southern California and using these computers to store programs that he had misappropriated. He also admitted that he stole E-mails, monitored computer systems and impersonated employees of victim companies, including Nokia Mobile Phones, Ltd., in his attempt to secure software that was being developed by those companies.

Hackers One Step Ahead
http://news.com.com/i/ne/bz/2002/05/hackers/hackers_chart7.gif
Nine months later, the criminal is still at large. The thief has brazenly taunted executives with repeated e-mails while staying ahead of investigators, deftly wiping away his electronic fingerprints and covering his tracks at every turn.
"We're sick to death of hearing from him," Ecount Chief Executive Matt Gillin said of the intruder, who has offered to return the information for a fee.
Although law enforcement agencies are quick to trumpet their occasional victories against cyber criminals, they are rarely able to track down hackers sophisticated enough to pull off such complicated heists. Few hackers of this calibre are arrested, and fewer still spend time behind bars
The resulting frustration for investigators, companies and consumer victims raises a question that has persisted for years: Why are hackers able to elude capture so easily? The answer, according to security analysts and fraud investigators, is that the Internet has bred an elite class of criminals who are organized, well funded and far more technologically sophisticated than most law enforcement officials.
"It's a world-class business," said Richard Power, editorial director of the Computer Security Institute, a private research firm that tracks electronic crime. "Al-Qaida and serious narcotic terrorists are using credit card fraud to finance their groups."
The people who stole credit card numbers from these major online merchants are still at large.

Company Date What they stole additional crimes
Playboy Nov 2001 Undisclosed number of credit card numbers; extortion
Ecount Aug 2001 Personal customer information; extortion
Western Union Sep 2000 15,000 card numbers
Creditcards.com Dec 2000 55,000 card numbers exposed on the Web; extortion
Egghead.com Dec 2000 3.7 million credit cards threatened*
CD Universe Jan 2000 350,000 card numbers posted online; extortion

* Egghead announced that a hacker had accessed its computer system, "potentially including (its) customer databases." Source: CNET News.com research

Virus Writers Getting Caught
While law enforcement authorities have recently arrested numerous virus writers and hackers, these arrests--and the stiff prison sentences that may follow--are likely to discourage only the most casual malware writers, say experts, and will probably have minimal impact on hardened criminals, particularly those overseas.
"Common sense would say it [the arrests] would deter some people," says Mark Greisiger, president of Net Diligence, a Philadelphia-based cyber security-auditing firm. "Kids out there who might want to take on the challenge of breaking into a Web site and defacing it, they might be deterred by thinking 'my pranks can put me in jail.' But then again, a lot of these people are youths and they might not think twice about it."
Authorities have arrested some young virus writers. Take 19-year-old Jeffrey Lee Parson, who pleaded guilty to creating a variant of the Blaster worm. Police arrested him in 2003, and earlier this year, a judge sentenced him to 18 months in jail. Similarly, authorities last May arrested an 18-year-old German man for creating the Sasser worm. Similarly, police arrested a 16-year-old from Canada and charged him with distributing the Randex computer worm.

Link to Organized Crime
"Any arrest of a malware developer or someone perpetrating an attack is a good thing," says Paul Kurtz, Executive Director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. He adds, however, "the threat, I believe, is migrating. In other words, we've gone from script kiddies to hackers to what I've seen now: organized crime getting involved in this area. This means we'll have much more sophisticated and stealthy criminal activities."

****Virus writers aren't the only ones getting caught: Last fall, the U.S. Secret Service announced the arrest of 28 people from eight states and six countries who were allegedly involved in a global organized cyber crime ring. Charges filed ranged from identity theft to computer fraud.****

By Hack4u

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