Hard times attract cybercrime boom

As the economy struggles, some online crime watchers see signs that a portion of newly unemployed skilled tech workers are turning to the theft of sensitive data. This is taking place even as the existing cyber criminal economy is seeking new ways to exploit consumer confusion stemming from the banking meltdown, according to Forbes.com. Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan said that in recent months, banking clients have been warning her of a spike in the use of stolen financial data.

"There's been a marked increase in the number of attacks and the number of successful fraud attempts," said Litan. She blamed the attacks on the thousands of IT workers who have been laid off and who have the technical abilities needed to steal data.

Scott Borg, director and chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit organization, said that as the financial crisis spreads from the U.S. to other parts of the world, it will likely drive more laid-off employees into the Eastern European and Russian cybercriminal economy.

"These are talented computer scientists, people who expected to be in positions of prestige but are now unemployed without prospects, basically let down by their system," said Borg.

While the trend is difficult to quantify, security researchers at McAfee report an explosion in the number of different strains of malicious software plaguing the Internet in recent months.

For more on this likely crime development
- see this Forbes.com article [1]