Is organized crime moving into cybersphere?
As if FBI special agent Tim O’Brien and his cybercrime fighting comrades don’t already have their hands full with bot herders, virus writers and other loosely-aligned crooks, now people are wondering when more traditional organized crime will grab a piece of the action. Following his presentation at CIO Forum, O’Brien was asked by one technology pro about whether the real-life Tony Sopranos of the organized crime world have caught the cybercrime bug. “I don’t think traditional organized crime in this country is involved the cybersphere yet, but that’s certainly a possibility,” he says. “A lot of it’s benign crime…it goes under the radar and most people don’t know anything about it. It’s not murder, it’s not racketeering, it’s stuff that’s not going to make a headline. The chances of making a tremendous amount of money off that without getting caught are much higher than going out and murdering your enemies.” More common are loosely organized criminals from other parts of the world wh
