“Recent headlines exposing vast credit card heists from retail
Web sites have prompted a media frenzy around issues of Internet
security. Most recently, MSNBC broke the story of one
semi-malicious hacker who gathered the details of nearly a
half-million credit cards which he tauntingly stored on a US
government computer. The elusive ‘Curador’ continues to post
account details on-line following his breach of CD-Universe’s data
base which yielded an impressive second-place score of 300,000
compromised accounts.”
“And now The Register is here to tell you that the situation is
a good deal worse than even the normally twitchy mainstream press
imagine.”
“One computer enthusiast well known to The Register, who goes by
the alias ‘Ksoze’ (as in Kayser Soze), shows particular contempt
for the security of the popular CGI log-in forms which enable
consumers to enter their credit details when making a purchase on
line. These Perl scripts are ripe for exploitation — the real
low-hanging fruit of the IP jungle.”
“The hacking underground is generally motivated by curiosity and
a desire for bragging rights, not larceny. But that could change.
‘Market pressures’ from organised crime syndicates may well corrupt
enough skilled hackers to make them a potential threat in future,
Jost predicts. At US $5 a pop, which seems a very reasonable cost
to a criminal outfit, a hacker with a half-million card numbers
could pocket a cool $2.5 million for a few hour’s risky
business.”