Cyber-crime bust

Prosecutors say this was a sophisticated cyber-crime operation run by people from the US, Ukraine, China, Estonia and Belarus. The indictment says they got started by driving around a car with a laptop computer and tapping into retail stores’ wireless networks, a technique called war driving. This official says once inside a network, they would install sniffer programs, which capture communications for computer networks and removes a retailer’s credit and debit card information. The stolen information was then sent to computers overseas where the info was then used to make fraudulent purchases, ATM withdrawals, and even manufacturing fake credit cards. This security organization says worldwide demand for such information is big business these days. He says US law enforcement agencies are getting better at cooperating with agencies in other countries to go after these criminals, but having said that there’s still this feeling that we’re just chipping away at the tip of the iceberg because the internet provides such anonymity. The US says this particular gang did tens of thousands of dollars in illegal business, another indication of how big the problem is. This analyst says the amount of money organized crime is making on drugs is the same amount as on cyber-crime. He says the most troubling aspect of this cyber-crime case is how some of the affected retail stores dealt with the activity: they either knew and didn’t tell, or were oblivious to the action altogether. He says retailers are the weak link in cyber-security, even if they’re also the victims in this kind of cyber-crime.