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Crime
UK's first online drug dealers net prison sentences
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
Published by The Register, Commissioned by the Daily Mirror

Three members of a drug dealing ring who used the internet to sell cannabis to addresses across the UK were sent to prison last week.
The hi-tech dealers plied their illicit trade from a website known as budmonkey that was set up by Sean Jackson, a former heroin addict. Regular customers used the site to order their drugs online. The dealers - the UK's first online drug ring - then shipped the cannabis to their clients using hermetically-sealed bags to hide the smell of the drugs.
 
Nigerian Crime Gang exploits Skype internet telephony service
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
The infamous Nigerian fraud gang 419 has discovered Skype, the internet telephony service that allows computer users to talk to each other across the internet for free.
Notorious for it’s development of the ‘advance fee fraud’, 419 have noted the increase in use of systems like Skype by small businesses keen to use the service to reduce their phone costs.
 
Transcript of an attempted 419 con
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   

The Nigerian 419 gang are a celebration of technological style over substance. Masters at the adoption of new technology, 419 once held up a telecommunication node belonging to a UK telecoms company for three days during the 1990s, while they poured messages through it.
One of the first organised crime gangs to take on email, 419 have shown time and again an ability to stay right on the edge of new technology, perhaps in part on it's insistence that every seven man cell is led by a qualified science graduate.
The gang's adoption of Skype is only the latest example of the gang's familiarity with modern communications technology.
During the past five years 419 has shown a frightening ability to respond to global disasters, notable recent examples being the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, the US war with Afghanistan and the UK - US invasion of Iraq in all of which 419 developed scenarios of funds going missing that could be spirited into your bank account.

The following is a transcript of a Skype conversation six months ago between a 419 'employee' and a US citizen.

 
Data raiders steal whole companies with memory sticks
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
High tech thieves are using the latest in memory stick technology to literally suck the brains and commercial secrets out of companies, Peter Warren reports.

Computer security experts are warning about the dangers of a tiny James Bond style spying device used by high-tech thieves that can steal a company’s secrets in the blink of an eye.
Available from the internet for only £10, the devices, called ‘asset strippers’ in the computer security industry, are specially modified USB memory drives capable of holding enormous amounts of data and are already being used by crime gangs and individuals in the City of London
.
 
How I became a hacker
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   

The Guardian (appeared under headline 'School for Scoundrels')

The dark underbelly of cyberspace is rarely exposed - but experts at one elite school teach Peter Warren how to get inside the mind of a computer hacker .

To the untrained eye it looked just like any computer screen. There were programs, files and the accumulated digital junk that sits on most people's desktops. But as I looked closely, I could begin to see everything that was happening: every document opened, every password entered, every program activated. It was as if I were looking at my own computer - except I wasn't. What I was secretly observing was someone else's screen: after just three days of training, I had become a fully fledged hacker.

 
Spooks claim close to catching high tech super gang
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
Published in The Register


One of the UK’s most secretive security organisations is hunting down a gang of high tech criminals in the Far East that has been attacking the computer systems of Government departments and multi-national companies to steal secrets.

The gang, which many experts say is either being headed up by a computer master criminal or a spy chief, has been responsible for well over a 1,000 computer break-in attempts over the last few months and has so far attacked 50 countries across the globe.
 
McKinnon warns off fledgling hackers as hearing looms
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
Published on The Register

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker facing extradition to the US in nine days time has warned other hacking wannabees not to follow his example.
McKinnon, who faces a possible 72 years in a US prison if he is forced to stand trial in America for entering over 53 US military computer systems, is terrified by the prospect.
“I was not doing anything – I wasn’t damaging anything, I was just looking. I did not think about the legal side of things and now I am facing the prospect of extreme violence in some US jail.”
 
Digital highwaymen
Crime
Written by Peter Warren   
It might sound glamorous and hi-tech, but most cybercrime draws on age-old methods of entrapment. Peter Warren and Bobbie Johnson investigate

Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

Technology hit the headlines for the wrong reasons again last week, as a gang of British software pirates who characterised themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods found themselves in jail. The convictions underlined the perception that cybercrime is on the up, a feeling exacerbated by a recent attempted £220m hacking raid on the Sumitomo Mitsui bank in London, which garnered Mission Impossible headlines. But despite the Hollywood-style imagery generated by such crimes, and the fact that these offences are on the increase, not all of it is as hi-tech as it might appear.
 
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