Fraudster vs. Hacker: Place Your Bets
If you think web fraud is the red-headed stepchild of cybercrime think again. Get ready CSOs and IT security pros because the new black hat is here and you won’t see him wearing a black hat—he’s disguised as anyone using stolen or synthetic identities to rob banks, rip-off internet retailers with stolen credit cards, and deface your Facebook wall—just for sport. Yes, the new new cybercriminal you better start worrying about is the fraudster, aka scammer. These soft labels that sound almost quaint belie the serious and growing threat they pose to every private organization and government on the Internet.
The multi-billion dollar IT security industry was spawned by attacks against computers or networks: malware, viruses, denial-of-service attacks—all the deep dark hacker stuff that keep the big IT security vendors cranking out products and updates to help organizations and consumers keep bad guys out of their networks and off their computers. The security faithful gather annually at conferences by RSA, Gartner, and Black Hat to stay up on … [read more]
