The potential for being victimized by one scam or another on the Internet is apparently growing. Not just credit card fraud and identity theft and email from Nigerian heiresses, but security problems like "invisible links" that can result from just browsing. This ITSecurity.com article isn't reassuring.
Mafia 2.0: Is The Mob Married To Your Computer?
There's not a lot of detail in the above article on the organized crime elements involved, from the UK, The Netherlands and Russia for example, but there are links to more info, including this TechWeb report:
"The Internet is the perfect playground for organized criminal activity," said Marcus Sachs, a researcher at SANS Internet Storm Watch, in an online note Tuesday. "Near-total anonymity, multiple ways to launder money, enormous amounts of value and wealth, extreme complexity, few laws and fewer law enforcement experts, and millions of users who have no concept of what is going on inside their shiny new computer."
Sachs is quoted later as saying he fears the Internet might not survive an "implosion" from criminal activities. Bruce Schneier, information security blogger and writer says software has to get better:
Fundamentally, the issue is insecure software. It is a result of bad design, poorly implemented features, inadequate testing and security vulnerabilities from software bugs. The money we spend on security is to deal with the myriad effects of insecure software. Unfortunately, the money spent does not improve the security of that software. We are paying to mitigate the risk rather than fix the problem.Posted by dan at January 19, 2007 9:21 PMThe only way to fix the problem is for vendors to improve their software. They need to design security in their products from the start and not as an add-on feature. Software vendors need also to institute good security practices and improve the overall quality of their products. But they will not do this until it is in their financial best interests to do so. And so far, it is not.