Hackers R Us
Hacking has become a business. Not only are various kits for hacking available but you can hire your own hacker. Cracking email passwords from somebody else’s account is one service. The Washington Post reports:
When Elaine Cioni found out that her married boyfriend had other girlfriends, she became obsessed, federal prosecutors say. So she turned to YourHackerz.com.
And for only $100, YourHackerz.com provided Cioni, then living in Northern Virginia, with the password to her boyfriend’s AOL e-mail account, court records show. For another $100, she got her boyfriend’s wife’s e-mail password. And then the passwords of at least one other girlfriend and the boyfriend’s two children. None had any clue what Cioni was doing, they would later testify.
It seems that there are a number of hacking services and they advertise regularly. There doesn’t seem to be much that is done about the hacking activity as long as it is limited to reading other people’s mail. The article continues:
Federal law prohibits hacking into e-mail, but without further illegal activity, it’s only a misdemeanor, noted Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and a former trial attorney in the Justice Department’s computer crime section.
“The feds usually don’t have the resources to investigate and prosecute misdemeanors,” Kerr said. “And part of the reason is that normally it’s hard to know when an account has been compromised, because e-mail snooping doesn’t leave a trace.”
Every state has laws roughly similar to the federal computer laws, Kerr said, and rate the offenses as misdemeanors.
If you want to be sure to keep something private, don’t use email. Or at least encrypt it.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.