From: InfoSec News (isnc4i.org)
Date: Mon Oct 27 2003 - 01:55:39 CST

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Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkc4i.org>

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/technology/27hack.html

By TONY SMITH
October 27, 2003

SÃO PAULO, Brazil, Oct. 26 - With a told-you-so grin, Marcos Flávio
Assunção reads out four digits - an Internet banking password - that
he has just intercepted as a reporter communicates via laptop with a
bank's supposedly secure Web site.

"It wouldn't matter if you were on the other side of the world in
Malaysia," said Mr. Assunção, a confident 22-year-old. "I could still
steal your password."

While impressive, Mr. Assunção's hacking talents are hardly unique in
Brazil, where organized crime is rife and laws to prevent digital
crime are few and largely ineffective. The country is becoming a
laboratory for cybercrime, with hackers - able to collaborate with
relative impunity - specializing in identity and data theft, credit
card fraud and piracy, as well as online vandalism.

"Most of us are hackers, not crackers; good guys just doing it for the
challenge, not criminals," Mr. Assunção said. He insisted that he had
never put his talents to criminal use, although he acknowledged that
at age 14 he once took down an Internet service provider for a weekend
after arguing with its owner.

Across the globe, hackers like to classify themselves as white hats
(the good guys) or black hats (the bad guys), said one Brazilian
expert, Alessio Fon Melozo, the editorial director of Digerati, which
publishes a hacker magazine, H4ck3r: The Magazine of the Digital
Underworld. "Here in Brazil, though, there are just various shades of
gray," Mr. Melozo said.

Mr. Assunção has created a security software program for his employer,
Defnet, a small Internet consultant in São Paulo.

The software uses a honey-pot system that can lure and monitor
intruders in real time. It also uses techniques to foil "man in the
middle" imposters who try to disguise their computers as those of
banks or other secure sites. So far, Mr. Assunção has been unable to
get an appointment with his target customers: security executives at
major banks.

"They say they have their own security and prefer to turn a blind
eye," he said. "But Brazilian hackers are known for our creativity. If
things go on like this, there'll be no more bank holdups with guns.
All robberies will be done over the Net."

For the last two years at least, Brazil has been the most active base
for Internet ne'er-do-wells, according to mi2g Intelligence Unit, a
digital risk consulting firm in London.

Last year, the world's 10 most active groups of Internet vandals and
criminals were Brazilian, according to mi2g, and included syndicates
with names like Breaking Your Security, Virtual Hell and Rooting Your
Admin. So far this year, nearly 96,000 overt Internet attacks - ones
that are reported, validated or witnessed - have been traced to
Brazil. That was more than six times the number of attacks traced to
the runner-up, Turkey, mi2g reported last month.

Already overburdened in their fight to contain violent crime in cities
like São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília, police officials are
finding it difficult to keep pace with hacker syndicates.

The 20 officers working for the electronic crime division of the São
Paulo police catch about 40 cybercrooks a month. But those criminals
account for but a fraction of the "notorious and ever increasing"
number of cybercrimes in São Paulo, Brazil's economic capital, said
Ronaldo Tossunian, the department's deputy commissioner.

The São Paulo department's effort is not helped by vague legislation
dating back to 1988, well before most Brazilians had even heard of the
Internet. Under that law, police officers cannot arrest a hacker
merely for breaking into a site, or even distributing a software
virus, unless they can prove the action resulted in the commission of
a crime.

So even after police investigators identified an 18-year-old hacker in
Rio de Janeiro, they had to track him for seven months and find
evidence that he had actually stolen money from several credit card
companies before they could pounce.

"We don't have the specific legislation for these crimes like they do
in America and Europe," Mr. Tossunian said. "Just breaking in isn't
enough to make an arrest, which means there's no deterrent."

In addition, analysts say many businesses, including banks, have been
slow to grasp, or refuse to acknowledge, how serious the problem is.
Banco Itaú, one of Brazil's largest private banks and the institution
from whose site Mr. Assunção filched the password during his
demonstration, declined to make someone available to comment.

Fabrício Martins, the chief security officer at Nexxy Capital Group, a
top provider of Web sites for e-commerce companies, said, "Most
businesses here don't take precautions until something bad happens
that obliges them to take action."

Mr. Martins, for example, first reinforced Nexxy's security software
after e-mail addresses of online clients were stolen two years ago.
Now his is one of 20 software programs for credit card clearing
approved by Visa International in Brazil.

Why are Brazil's hackers so strong and resourceful? Because they have
little to fear legally, Mr. Assunção said, adding that hackers here
are sociable and share more information than hackers in developed
countries. "It's a cultural thing," he said. "I don't see American
hackers as willing to share information among themselves."

Though the expense of owning a computer is prohibitive for most people
in this country, where the average wage is less than $300 a month,
getting information about hacking is simple. H4ck3r magazine,
available at newsstands across the country, sells about 20,000 copies
a month.

Mr. Melozo, the editorial director, rejects any suggestion that H4ck3r
teaches Brazilians to commit cybercrime.

"It is a very fine line, I know," he said. "But what guides us is the
principle of informing, educating our readers in a responsible way."

 
*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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