[ISN] War on cybercrime--we're losing

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 01:02:27 PDT

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    Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkat_private>
    
    http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-912780.html
    
    By Greg Sandoval 
    Special to ZDNet News
    May 14, 2002, 5:50 AM PT
    
    The nightmare for Ecount, an online gift certificate service, began 
    last year when a hacker broke in to the company's system and stole 
    personal information belonging to its customers. 
    
    Nine months later, the criminal is still at large. The thief has 
    brazenly taunted executives with repeated e-mails while staying ahead 
    of investigators, deftly wiping away his electronic fingerprints and 
    covering his tracks at every turn. 
    
    "We're sick to death of hearing from him," Ecount Chief Executive Matt 
    Gillin said of the intruder, who has offered to return the information 
    for a fee. 
    
    Although law enforcement agencies are quick to trumpet their 
    occasional victories against cybercriminals, they are rarely able to 
    track down hackers sophisticated enough to pull off such complicated 
    heists. Few hackers of this caliber are arrested, and fewer still 
    spend time behind bars. 
    
    The resulting frustration for investigators, companies and consumer 
    victims raises a question that has persisted for years: Why are 
    hackers able to elude capture so easily? The answer, according to 
    security analysts and fraud investigators, is that the Internet has 
    bred an elite class of criminals who are organized, well funded and 
    far more technologically sophisticated than most law enforcement 
    officials. 
    
    "It's a world-class business," said Richard Power, editorial director 
    of the Computer Security Institute, a private research firm that 
    tracks electronic crime. "Al-Qaida and serious narcotic terrorists are 
    using credit card fraud to finance their groups." 
    
    Fraud cost e-tailers $700 million in lost merchandise last year, says 
    Avivah Litan, a financial analyst for research firm Gartner. Some 
    large Internet retailers have software that screens transactions and 
    refuses to sell to customers who appear suspicious. Litan estimates 
    that this costs Web stores between 5 percent and 8 percent of sales. 
    
    A Gartner study also shows that 5.2 percent of online shoppers have 
    been victimized by credit card fraud and 1.9 percent by identity 
    theft. 
    
    "These are huge numbers. This is scary stuff," Litan said. "The 
    Internet has got an albatross around its neck." 
    
    Skilled hackers shake off investigators by shuttling between multiple 
    servers before launching an attack. After fleeing a targeted site with 
    credit card numbers or other bounty, the intruders immediately begin 
    deleting the log files of each server they have passed through, 
    eliminating any record that they were there. 
    
    It is the equivalent of "vacuuming up the crime scene," said 
    independent fraud investigator Dan Clements, who runs a Web site 
    devoted to catching hackers called CardCops.com. Only about 10 percent 
    of active hackers are savvy enough to work this way consistently, he 
    said, but they are almost always successful. 
    
    Having grown up with the breakneck pace of "Internet time," hackers of 
    this digital generation use speed as a primary weapon. As with all 
    criminal investigations, pursuing online suspects means time-consuming 
    records searches that often require subpoenas--a process that can give 
    hackers an insurmountable advantage. 
    
    FBI agents can swiftly get subpoenas from the courts but often lose 
    critical time trying to serve them. Agents can spend days sorting 
    through digital smoke screens created by multiple servers, requiring 
    agents to obtain and serve multiple subpoenas. 
    
    In the meantime, valuable evidence is often lost, and by then, hackers 
    are long gone. 
    
    The federal government is taking steps to improve its fight against 
    criminal activity online. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller created a new 
    cybercrime unit in December, and the Bush administration has added 50 
    new federal prosecutors to address the problem nationwide. 
    
    Unsolved hacks
    
    Still, few believe that these measures will eradicate a problem that's 
    become so deeply entrenched. The FBI confirmed, for example, that no 
    arrests have been made in any of six recent high-profile cases: 
    
    * Playboy.com: An intruder slipped past the Web site security systems 
      of the adult entertainment company last November and obtained the 
      personal information of an undisclosed number of customers of the 
      site's e-commerce store. The hacker notified customers that he or 
      she had pilfered the information and, as proof, gave them their credit 
      card numbers. 
    
    * Ecount: Last summer, a hacker circumvented the Internet defenses of 
      the Philadelphia-based company's gift certificate service and 
      notified customers of the breach in an e-mail that included their home 
      addresses. The hacker then demanded $45,000 from the company to keep 
      him from exposing the personal information of 350,000 customers. 
    
    * Egghead.com: A hacker infiltrated the e-tailer's system in December 
      2000. After three weeks of investigation, the company said the 
      intruder did not obtain the personal information of its 3.7 million 
      customers, but many banks said they spent millions of dollars to 
      issue new credit cards in the meantime. 
    
    * Creditcards.com: Also in December 2000, a hacker broke in to systems 
      maintained by the company, which enables merchants to accept 
      payments online, and made off with about 55,000 credit card numbers. 
      The hacker tried to extort the company and, when executives refused 
      to pay, exposed the numbers by posting them on the Web. 
    
    * Western Union: In September 2000, a hacker exploited an opening in 
      the Web site of the financial services company and got away with 
      more than 15,000 credit card numbers. Human error left "performance 
      management files" open on the site during routine maintenance, 
      allowing the hacker access. 
    
    * CD Universe: About 350,000 credit card numbers were stolen from the 
      online music company in January 2000, one of the first large-scale 
      hackings of its kind. The thief, identified only as "Maxus," held 
      the card numbers hostage and demanded a $100,000 ransom. When the 
      company refused, the hacker posted the numbers on a Web site. 
    
    Without commenting on these specific cases, law enforcement officials 
    say many online merchants may be partly to blame for the lack of 
    arrests because they do not devote enough resources to prevent 
    intrusion or facilitate investigations in the event of a crime. 
    
    "If there is any message to get out there, it would be for companies 
    to upkeep their antivirus and firewall software," said Laura Bosley, a 
    spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles field headquarters. 
    
    Jennifer Granick, litigation director at the Stanford Law School 
    Center for Internet and Society, said security is often neglected by 
    companies more interested in making a quick buck. 
    
    E-commerce companies "rushed online during the dot-com boom, and they 
    saw the money that was to be had and didn't give a thought to 
    security," she said. "They were too busy trying to capture eyeballs to 
    secure their sites." 
    
    Even if they have fortified their Web sites against attack, many 
    companies are still unaware of the importance of preserving evidence 
    if a crime occurs--ignorance that can kill any hope of catching a 
    perpetrator, said Bruce Smith, an investigator for Pinkerton 
    Consulting & Investigations and a former FBI agent who worked on 
    computer crime cases for six years. 
    
    Frequently, Smith said, agents will scan the Web logs of a hacked 
    company only to find a blank record that leaves the intruder's trail 
    stone cold. Sometimes, he said, the shopkeeper accidentally destroys 
    the logs, covering the hacker's tracks with other records. More often, 
    the online store never turns on the logging feature to begin with 
    because it could slow a Web site's performance. 
    
    "You cross your fingers when you start looking at the logs," Smith 
    said. "Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not." 
    
    Moreover, precious time can be lost when companies hesitate to contact 
    authorities immediately after an intrusion. The reason for the delay 
    is often rooted in business, not justice. 
    
    "Fear," Smith said. "They're reluctant to admit that they've been 
    victimized. You can imagine the bad press. Here's someone who's 
    telling clients their information is safe at the same time their site 
    is getting hacked." 
    
    Security experts blasted Egghead for taking weeks to investigate 
    whether the personal information of its customers had been 
    compromised. A company with good logging capability should have been 
    able to determine the extent of the intrusion within a few days, 
    security specialists said, perhaps saving banks a cost of between $5 
    and $25 for each new credit card issued out of precaution. 
    
    "I think there was some things that we wished we did before the 
    attack," said Jeff Sheahan, the former chief executive of Egghead. "We 
    thought we had a tight oversight system. We asked ourselves how we 
    missed this. It was just focusing on other things and not sensing that 
    there was a big enough risk." 
    
    The investigation was expensive for Egghead, but the intrusion exacted 
    a much higher price in the form of lost confidence among its 
    customers. "When you're an e-commerce business, trust is important. I 
    don't think there is any doubt that trust level took a hit to some 
    degree," Sheahan said. 
    
    Other online merchants would do well to learn from Egghead's mistakes, 
    for the number of hackings is growing. To gauge this trend, CardCops' 
    Clements posted fake credit card numbers on the Web and then spread 
    the word at sites popular with "carders"--those who traffic in stolen 
    credit cards--that a Web site had accidentally divulged the 
    information. 
    
    In less than a half-hour, the site had 74 visitors from 31 countries. 
    Within a couple of days, the number of visitors had grown to 1,600. No 
    one can say how many came to the site with criminal intent, but 
    Clements believes most did. 
    
    "There's a war raging online," he said, "and the bottom line is that 
    law enforcement is losing." 
    
    
     
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    without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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