An incredibly interesting report on electronic crime recently crossed my desk. "E-Crime Survey 2009" was conducted by the 7th Annual e-Crime Congress in partnership with KPMG. Electronic crime is growing at an alarming pace. This paper sheds light on some of the reasons why electronic fraud is growing so rapidly. I do not scare easily, but one particular quote, made by Uri Rivner, who is the Head of New Technologies - Identity Protection and Verification Solutions, RSA,The Security Division of EMC, actually sent chills down my spine. Rivner wrote:

Trojan kits such as Zeus and Limbo are now so affordable and user-friendly that many non-sophisticated fraudsters that were previously focused on Phishing are now diversifying to crimeware. If your Trojan isn’t configured for a specific target bank, worry not: for $10 you can buy a custom HTML injection template for use with your Trojan. It will address any specific defences used by the bank, and even automatically check the balance for you. And for less than $300 per month you can even buy a “Software as a service” subscription to a Zeus Trojan hosted in a “bulletproof” server and connected to an infection kit. Just pay the subscription, sit back, and start infecting machines around the world and harvesting the victim’s credentials. 

In layman's terms, Rivner said that anyone can go out and literally buy a crimeware network, complete with everything they need to steal your credit card information. A cyber-criminal no longer needs a background in computer science, or any real technical skills to attack you and try to steal your financial information. A crime network is just a few downloads from anyone's reach.

What does this mean? The rate of crimeware infection will increase exponentially. As public awareness of phishing increases, the phishers are going to turn into credit card harvesters.  All I can say is that I'm glad to have a SmartSwipe...