Inside The Daily Life Of Hackers: Phishing Techniques And Cybercrime

Claims of six figure "salaries" earned without ever leaving the bedroom. A hearty supply of "free" computer hardware and a never-ending e-mail inbox full of victims. Credit card accounts "phished" from fake porn sites, or clever e-mails promising "You've got Pictures" . . . Claims of six figure "salaries" earned without ever leaving the bedroom. A hearty supply of "free" computer hardware and a never-ending e-mail inbox full of victims. Credit card accounts "phished" from fake porn sites, or clever e-mails promising "You've got Pictures" that ask for AOL user names and passwords. What do computer criminals do all day? Work the system - and reap the rewards. In this MSNBC.com exclusive, you'll get a chance to peek inside the daily life of two computer criminals, and see how the system works to their advantage.

Security experts will tell you most of the computer attacks they see every day are initiated by clever teen-agers, so called "script kiddies." Many of these never get much past the stage of simply altering Web page content a few times, a temporal, harmless instance of graffiti in the virtual world. In fact, some argue these curious computer kids are hardly criminals at all.