Criminals Enlisting Teens as Online Crime Goes Pro: Experts

Criminals enlisting teens as online crime goes pro: experts
Last Updated: Monday, June 4, 2007 | 10:03 PM ET CBC News

Online criminals are increasingly preying on Canadians as professional, for-profit attacks on computers grow and young people are swelling their ranks, experts told CBC News Online on Monday.

"Criminals go where the money is," Dave Marcus, a senior security strategist at McAfee Inc., said during a visit to Toronto to present the company's 2007 North American criminology report on organized crime and the internet.

Marcus, based in Davidsonville, Md., said as Canadians spend more time online and conduct more of their lives' daily activities - such as banking - online, they are becoming an increasingly attractive target to digital criminals.

JARGON
BOTNETS are networks of computers that have been hijacked by malicious groups or individuals to do their bidding. Their owners are usually unwitting victims who have no idea their machines have been infected and turned into so-called "zombies" or "bots." The zombie computers are typically used to distribute spam or phishing e-mails, or viruses and Trojans that are used to hijack other computers. Botnet operators often rent time or bandwidth on their networks to spam e-mail marketers and phishing scam artists.

MALWARE is a catch-all term for malicious software such as computer viruses or spyware that compromise the security or function of personal computers.

PHISHING is a technique criminals use to try to trick people into disclosing sensitive information, such as online banking names and passwords. It is often conducted through e-mails.

PHARMING is an attack in which malicious individuals try to redirect traffic from one website to a false one. This is sometimes done to collect a person's login or password information.

TROJANS are programs that appear to perform one function in order to hide a malicious one. Like the mythological Trojan horse such programs are named after, the deception tricks people into granting criminals access to a computer.