Sites offering medical histories, information about the shipment of goods and corporate e-mail and pension details have all been uncovered. While credit card details are cheap, selling for only a few dollars, the logfiles of big companies can go for up to $300 (£150), he told the BBC News website. (Thieves Set Up Data Supermarkets).
The sophistication, complexity and exponential growth of these crimes are overwhelming law enforcement agencies and legislation-producing bodies, and ARC Training warns that 2008 is set to be a very miserable year for hundreds of thousands of individuals and companies as their sensitive data becomes compromised.
A key countermeasure is raising awareness, but with reports of security managers themselves becoming victims of scams such as 419s, and IT administrators in many companies not taking the lead in promulgating the types of scams that are prevalent, it is difficult to determine where the responsibility for delivering awareness lies.
Perhaps the security management community needs a Scam Summit of its own!
