Via Zone-H.org -
Is money made by data thieves a source for terrorism?
The link between cyber crime and terrorism is quite foggy and it is not easy to determine which activities are backed by terrorist organizations and which ones are carried out by “normal” attackers. Anyway, as declared by Miss Avivah Litan, Gartner's resident expert on identity theft, recent events have cleared up the situation a bit more.
"This is something people have been talking about since 9-11,"she says. "But it's really a new phenomenon."
The first effective proof of cracking activities aimed to Middle East extremist group's fund-raising was discovered in late 2006 thanks to the arrest of approximately 50 people in Egypt and Lebanon. The arrests led to the discovery of millions of dollars filched by using stolen debit and credit account numbers.
Miss Litan’s declaration was released after last week’s attack to the company of chain retailers T.J. Maxx and Marshalls that provoked a huge data breach.
There’s no confirmation about the involvement of terrorism in such attack but security experts do not hide their concern about this possibility.
Specifically, Miss Litan's assertions focus on the debate about what is really happening on the digital ground: nothing new... but very little known!
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This type of thing isn't new. For as long as there has been an internet, bad people have used it to do bad things.
But it is important to remember that bad people just don't want to buy boats with your money....sometimes they want to hurt people.
How much of the fraud is really going directly toward terrorism? Who knows, and perhaps we will we will never know. I have a feeling that the percent is low...but then again, who knows.
If even the percentage was low, it would still be more than the general person on the street would ever expect it to be.
To see into the future, you only need to look into the past.
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