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Punishment for Cyber Criminals Refreshing to See

By Todd Weller, VP, Corporate Development, Hexis Cyber Solutions

In perusing the news the other morning, an article caught my eye, the title: “Hacker who hit U.S.
sentenced.” It’s rare to see this type of event, so I was intrigued.

First off I have to give kudos to the author Alyssa Bereznak, the National Correspondent,
Technology for Yahoo!. This article is well done, to the point, and ends with a provocative
conclusion.

The short of it is a 25 year old Vietnamese man was given a prison sentence for hacking into
computers of U.S. companies. He stole personal information for 200M Americans. He had 1,300
customers. The information was used to file $65M in fraudulent tax returns. The hacker made
$2M! Maybe I need a new career…just kidding!

While the attacker made a nice short term living off his efforts, he’ll now be spending the next 13
years behind bars.

These type of prosecutions are scarce but it’s refreshing to see these types efforts to hold cyber
criminals accountable for their actions. I liked the comments from the Assistant Attorney
General who pointed to prosecutions as changing the cost-benefit analysis.

So on to Alyssa’s provocative conclusion. She highlights the fact that personal information for
millions of Americans was compromised by a 20 year old from afar and that the U.S.
government has demonstrated it can’t protect its own employees information.

In short, it’s time for U.S. companies and the government to become more serious about
shoring up their infrastructure.

47 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – July 2015 Edition
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