"Now it's all terrorism and monetary gain"

As the old saying goes, that's where the money is:

"Every criminal is jumping on this bandwagon...there's less risk than robbing a bank in person. That's why they are leaning toward cybercrime."

...

"Now it's all terrorism and monetary gain"

Thus sayeth Michael Calce, a.k.a. Mafiaboy, who as a 15 year old took down CNN, Yahoo!, E*Trade, Amazon, and E-Bay, back in 2000. In a post written in my first week of blogging, I described the evolution of hacking:

1995 - "Napoleon Dynamite" hacking: "Girls want boyfriends with skills ... Bow hunting skills ... Nunchuck skills ... Computer hacking skills."

2001 - Bragging rights hacking: I was actually at the Infosec computer security conference in 2003 when Fluffy Bunny was marched out in handcuffs by the Police. I always thought that he was one of the funnier of the web site defacers.

2006 - Hacking for Dollars. Malware (Spam, Phishing, electronic credit card theft, etc) is now a Billion dollar industry, attracting serious talent and funding (Mafia, etc). The Bad Guys are better funded than we are. Game Over.

The girls at Sexy Hacking could not be reached for comment.

It's been quite a while since kids got into this game for intellectual exploration. Now it's astonishing the amount of money in cybercrime. Maybe Mafiaboy shouldn't have rehabilitated himself.