I got you once, and I will get you again!

"If a fraudster or fraud ring can successfully perpetrate fraud, you can pretty much assume they will continue to do so until you stop them." D.Montague

Red Bank, Oct. 30 2008/The FraudBlog Newsletter/- While the article, "The Hackers Mindset - I did nothing Wrong" by Jon Swartz of USA Today is not new news, it can provide good insight into the makeup of a cybercriminal. It focuses primarily on the TJX hackers and provides the typical definition of a cybercriminal as being young, male and very computer savvy. However typical, I found the background story on Gonzales having been caught before so engrossing I decided to test the profile myself.

So I thought I would take a look at a couple of other major cyber crime cases. In the past 60 days there have been three very public and big cyber crime cases. In these cases the cybercriminal was young, all under 30, male and they were very computer savvy. (Albert Gonzales - TJX Breach, Ehud Tenenbaum - Direct Cash Management Breach, Vladimir Tsastsin- EstDomain)

In all three of these cases the cybercriminal had been caught doing this before. In 2 of the 3 cases, Gonzales and Ehud Tenenbaum these individuals were actually given lighter sentences for their first transgression by working with law enforcement after being caught.

In all of these cases when the cybercriminal was later presented with a weakness in a business's fraud controls or security measures they exploited them. Regardless of the fact that they had been caught before, they believed they wouldn't get caught again. In all three cases they had escalated the scope and level of their schemes.

Lesson learned, they don't learn their lesson.