Cyber-criminals: Time to go after the hackers?

By Timon Singh | 09/10/09 - 17:10

Cyber-crime has come a long way since the early days of the internet. Once 'hacking' was simply a way for computer experts to impress each other by getting through each others firewalls, but today it's a multi billion dollar business, enabling criminals to steal and blackmail.

What is even more worrying is that one in five people will be victims of a cyber-attack, and that they are currently occurring at a rate of one every quarter of a second.

It is because of this that Rowan Trollope, senior vice-president for consumer products at Symantec, the largest maker of anti-virus software, thinks it is time for online security experts to review their defences. Instead of simply erecting firewalls around computer systems and defending against multiple intrusions, he believes it's time to go on the offensive.

"It's time to stop building burglar alarms to keep people out and go after the bad guys," he said, speaking to Business Week.

How? By recruiting victims of cyber-attacks and former hackers.

Symantec have just released their new Norton Internet Security program, but this time the program enables the company to collect data about attempted computer intrusions and then forward the information to authorities.

Not just that, but Symantec be naming, shaming and even putting bounties on the heads of hackers. Symantec will start to list the FBI's top 10 hackers and their schemes on their website and offer cash rewards for information leading to their arrests.

Law enforcement agencies are in agreement that utilizing the public is the only way to stop many of these hackers, especially considering the number of complaints reported to the government-backed Internet Crime Complaint Centre rose 33 percent last year to 275,284.

With many victims unintentionally installing malicious code onto their computers, Symantec's new product utilizes a technology dubbed Autopsy that quarantines any suspicious software and then creates an onscreen alert that tells the user the software came from an unexpected location such as China or Eastern Europe. A service called Norton Community Watch collects the data and forwards them to law enforcement.

With systems like these and support from both the public and worldwide companies, Trollope is convinced that hacker operations could soon be compromised.

"I'm convinced we can clean up the Internet in 10 years if we can peel away the dirt and show people the threats they're facing," says Trollope.