- WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters)
- Creators of computer viruses are winning the battle with law enforcers
and getting away with crimes that cost the global economy some $13 billion
this year, a Microsoft official said Wednesday.
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- Counterfeit centers are shifting from California and
Western Europe to countries including Paraguay, Colombia and Ukraine said
David Finn, Microsoft's director of digital integrity for Europe, the Middle
East and Africa.
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- In Asia, pirate plants have emerged in Vietnam, Macao,
and Myanmar (Burma) in addition to more established facilities in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Thailand.
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- "So far they are getting away with it. They are
winning by a considerable margin. Very few have been identified or prosecuted
or punished," Finn said.
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- He cited estimates by Business Week that financial damage
this year from bugs like the Blaster worm and the SoBig.F e-mail virus,
which crashed systems and disrupted Internet traffic around the world,
would total some $13 billion.
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- The cost of protecting networks against such cyberattacks
was put at $3.8 billion.
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- Finn also said neither civil lawsuits nor criminal prosecutions
were doing an adequate job of stamping out software piracy and seizing
the multi-million dollar profits it generates.
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- Finn said the number of counterfeit Microsoft products
intercepted had more than doubled to four million units this year from
1.75 million two years ago. But the value of pirate software seized --
$1.3 billion over three years -- was "a small fraction of what's really
out there."
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- He estimated the profit margin on counterfeit software
at 900 percent -- nine times higher than for distributing cocaine.
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- SOBERING PICTURE
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- Finn was addressing a cybercrime conference in Germany
at which experts presented a sobering picture of progress against hackers,
fraudsters, drug runners, child pornographers and other assorted criminals
exploiting the World Wide Web.
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- Britain's top hi-tech crime officer told Reuters in an
interview that drug dealers and arms traffickers were recruiting experts
from the computer industry using cash inducements or threats.
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- "Organized crime is identifying those kinds of skills
and buying them in," said Len Hynds, head of the National Hi-Tech
Crime Unit.
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- "I know of sophisticated drug-trafficking organizations,
arms-trafficking organizations that are now making use of hacking skills
and hacking into the servers of unsuspecting businesses so that they can
then launch attacks and hide their activity and their illicit material."
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- He said "we shouldn't be surprised" if terror
organizations were looking to recruit computer expertise.
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- Hynds said gangs were recruiting people with IT skills
not only to help them commit cybercrime but to secure their own communications
networks and avoid detection.
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- "Organized crime, whatever its commodity, is driven
by a desire for profit, and often its Achilles' heel is its communications
processes. We're aware that organized crime is now using sophisticated
methods to make its communications more secure, and it will recruit people
to assist in the process."
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- He said companies needed to recruit more carefully.
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- "They need to look at how they recruit staff, how
they vet staff, how they recruit consultants who may only be with them
for a very short period of time. Although remote attack is becoming more
prevalent, it's still a fact that most threats come from inside a company,"
he said.
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- Hynds said British police were also seeing a sharp rise
in 'spoof' Web sites of financial institutions, intended to dupe customers
into revealing their account details and passwords.
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- He said the number of cases had risen to 40 so far this
year from just seven in 2002 and the fake sites had become "far more
sophisticated."
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