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Cyber crooks
getting trickier
A seminar will teach
By Brett Alexander-Estes
Internet self-defense
Star-BulletinIT'S Saturday morning at the ATM machine. You reach the front of the line, punch in your password, complete the transaction, and leave. But when you open your credit card statement a few weeks later, your charge account shows $15,000 in purchases you never made.
"Password theft can be as simple as someone looking over your shoulder at an ATM, then guessing your log-in name at Amazon.com and using the newly acquired password to buy books and CDs with your credit card number," said Les McCarter, chief technology officer of TeraBiz, a Honolulu computer training company.
"We use passwords to access ATM machines, passwords to access our office computers, passwords for our Internet shopping. Because we're all human, it's not unusual to use the same password over and over again."
McCarter will address password theft and other commercial cybercrime at the Cybercrime Seminar tomorrow at the Neal Blaisdell Center.
Speaking with McCarter at the seminar will be Sgt. Don L. Brister of the San Jose Police Department's technology crime detail, which works in the high-tech mecca of Silicon Valley. Brister, who has lectured on cybercrime to the California Department of Justice, will discuss "systems and information technology and how industry needs to ensure that because of the Internet they are protected properly."
Brister said that three years ago when he began working for the San Jose Police Department's Fraud Unit -- High Technology Crimes Detail, "(perhaps) between 2 and 5 percent of the crimes that I assigned to my folks were Internet-related." Now, he estimates that half are Internet-related fraud.
McCarter noted: "The Internet caught everyone by surprise on how quickly it caught on with small businesses and home users."
Because security was not considered an issue when the computer industry developed, neither hardware nor software have effective barriers in place, McCarter said. That means a computer opens itself to invasion the instant it goes online. "It's surprising how often a computer just sitting on the Internet is looked at by potential hackers," he said.
At the Cybercrime Seminar, McCarter will discuss password security, virus management and corporate and personal firewalls. He will also review information security on Windows 95/98 and NT computers.
Brister said computers are getting simpler while thieves are getting sophisticated.
"(They) have gone to trade school in computer programming or are working within systems as system administrators," he said.
"One particular guy had a master's in business administration and a bachelor's in physics," Brister said. "He decided to go the criminal route and it was fraud via the Internet." He said the man defrauded companies nationwide using just a cell phone, a fax machine and Internet email.
While secure software and system management give companies substantial protection against cybercriminals, industry and local law enforcement need to work together to be effective, Brister said.
It took the San Jose high technology crimes unit more than 200 man-hours to nab the errant MBA, Brister said, adding that the thief was caught "after he had been in process for a year."
"His goal was $50 million," Brister said. "People think, 'Oh, he could never make that.' But trust me, it was something he could do."
The seminar, sponsored by TeraBiz, American Airlines and Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, will be held from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. July 18 in the Hawaii Suite at Blaisdell Center. Admission is $20 a person. Call 540-5405 for information.
