A big tip of my hat to investigators and the U.S. Attorney who brought down Albert Gonzalez, the Miami hacker authorities were able to tie to a cyber-crimewave that hit companies from Heartland Payment Systems to Hannaford Brothers.
The 28-year-old Gonzalez pled guilty to various charges and now faces up to 25 years in prison.
So that’s one cyber-criminal taken off the streets..er..the cyber highway. But untold thousands of professionals working for huge cyber-crime companies remain at work, developing new ways to steal everything you have, or make you into an unwilling, unwitting partner in crime.
From reports I have read, my guess is that Gonzalez is an expert amateur, not a professional on the level of those employed by organized crime.
I don’t know if there are a million criminal hackers out there, both amateur and pro. No one knows the real number, but a couple of years ago a government agency claimed that there were as many as 14 million hackers capable of breaking into a home computer with “average” protection.
So, score one for the good guys. But don’t relax. The odds that a criminal is controlling your PC at this very moment are better than 9 to 1. And don’t bet on your security software. The FBI says off-the-shelf or downloaded products have a failure rate well above 90%.
Can I ask a question? If someone were using your PC to send out tens of thousands of pieces of spam every day, or storing and distributing illegal stuff, like pornography, how soon would you want to know?
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