BreachBytes

Two big legal cases have made headlines in the cybercrime arena over the last week. First, Reuters reported on 1/3/08 that the Justice department has indicted Alan Ralsky, known as the “spam king”, under charges that he orchestrated a stock spamming operation. Reuters, in a 1/8/08 article, is also reporting on a case where a system administrator was hit for $81K in fines and 30 months in prison for unleashing a classic logic bomb on his former employers servers.

Maybe this is just a coincidence but does this signal a shift towards holding criminals accountable for cybercrime? I personally would like to think so since a huge reason that cybercrime is so rampant is due to the U.S. legal system’s inability to evolve and adapt in the prosecution of crimes that take place on or using the Internet.

It could also simply be that the news media is starting to pay attention. Either way it is good to see examples of people getting nailed for illegal activities on the Internet. The more the word gets out that people are held accountable for their actions the less people will feel they can get away with anything on the Internet. People don’t generally walk around breaking laws in the real world due to a fear of prosecution from law enforcement. We need to get to the point as a society that people feel the same way about their online behavior. Prosecution and awareness are two powerful tools in moving in this direction.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Cybercrime, Links to articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.