📸

tens of millions. The chances of finding a sucker are very greatly enhanced.

The 419 scam comes in many shapes and sizes. It sometimes arrives as an appeal to rich Westerners to come to the aid of an impoverished African child. Letters, faxes and emails beseeching Americans in partic- ular for funds to erect a new church or bolster a congregation are frequent - in these cases, the motivation of the victims is well inten- tioned and charitable. Another lucrative prey of the 419 scammers are the lovelorn, in particular middle-aged widows and divorcees who develop virtual relationships with West African toy boys, who slowly leech them of their savings as an advance on sexual dalliance that never comes to pass.

419s are now being dispatched from China in both Chinese and English. This complements a second Chinese hacking speciality, which is the theft of items from MMORPG, an awkward acronym for the awkwardly named Massively Multiple Online Role-Playing Games, such as World of Warcraft, or the 'real life' games, Second Life or Habbo Hotel. These all have digital currencies that can be exchanged for genuine money. This in turn invests value in the virtual goods and services, which players can purchase to add to the pleasure of their gaming experience. Although they are not alone, Chinese hackers have learned to 'steal' these digital items or monies, which they can convert to actual real-world cash. China's monumental computing potential remains largely untapped at the moment, yet it is already regarded in most sectors relating to computer security in civilian and military life as second in the global pecking order after the United States. As China begins to realise that potential, the nature of the Internet will change.

To combat these growing threats, governments and industry are now pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into cyber security, whether in law enforcement, the protection of intellectual copyright or the military domain. Almost all of these funds are invested in technology, the idea being that this will be sufficient to protect the Internet from all the bad code, malware and viruses that are prowling around cyberspace looking for unprotected computer networks to attack.

By contrast, there is virtually no investment in trying to ascertain who is hacking and why. Nobody differentiates between the hackers from WikiLeaks, from the American or Chinese military, from criminal syndicates and from the simply curious.

📸