> The Digital Criminals Among Us
> Who Are They and How Do We Stop Them?

> May 31, 2000

> By Marcia Clark

> LOS ANGELES (APBnews.com) -- The scope of the devastation was astounding. Casualties were reported in 80 percent of the businesses in Sweden and 70 percent in Germany. The parliament in London went incommunicado. Stateside, 80 percent of all federal agencies took direct hits.

> War? Not exactly. It was just one of the latest waves of computer virus attacks that have struck the global networks in the past few months. Current estimates make the "Love Bug" responsible for affecting literally tens of millions of computers within the first two hours of its flight. The cost, measured in lost productivity, has been estimated to be as much as $10 billion.

> And now, even as we're still cleaning up from that last attack, we're faced with the new "Killer Resume" virus that began infecting and destroying computer hard drives over the Memorial Day weekend.

> The first question that came to mind when I read of such destruction is: What kind of person would go to such lengths -- and risk a prison sentence -- to wreak such havoc? I pictured a wild-haired, 180 I.Q genius cyberfreak with lenses thick as Coke bottles, cackling over his keyboard as he launches his viral torpedoes around the globe.

> But Dr. Michael Maloney set me straight about the genius part right off the bat.

> Maloney is a well-respected forensic and clinical psychologist who has spent 30 years examining and treating some of our strangest and most dangerous criminals, including hackers.

> Rarely geniuses

> He suggests that hackers are rarely geniuses; many are of barely average intelligence.

> How, I wondered then, could they come up with these viruses?

> Imagine, he said, if you spent as much as 16 hours a day, just about every day, at your computer -- don't you think you could figure out how to put some pre-written codes together?

> Maloney was careful to avoid laying down hard-and-fast rules about the profiles of the personality types at issue here, saying it was too soon to be definitive. But he was able to share a number of insights on an impressionistic level based on his own interviews and experience with the hackers who are facing criminal charges and prison sentences.

> Undersocialized schizoids?

> Hackers tend to be undersocialized with few connections to friends, jobs, family or spouses that provide them positive reinforcement from the outside world. Their computers are not only their favored source of entertainment but their primary means of interpersonal contact. Except it isn't personal. That's part of the problem. The awareness that there are actual people who will suffer actual -- not virtual -- harm at the other end of their destructive games is not real to many of these vandals.

> Some are high enough on the pathological scale to merit diagnosis as schizoids, for whom people are all objects, even when they're standing in the same room.

> It's hardly surprising, then, that socially isolated types more comfortable with machines than people would naturally gravitate toward the virtual world of cyberspace.

> Aiming for destruction

> But why do it this way? Why not invent a cool new game or something? Why aim for destruction?

> The answer: impact. The public impact of massively harmful Internet activities is so much greater. When you become the engine of destruction for 75 percent of the industrialized world, you find yourself being taken very seriously by millions of people who never heard of you before, people who would never have heard of you if all you'd done was dream up some spiffy new game.

> That need for impact is the real motivational key to these crimes, and it feeds on itself. Hackers push the envelope further and further, addicted to the need to see their notoriety on a grander and grander scale until they finally do enough damage to get the attention of law enforcement officials -- and millions of outraged computer users -- around the entire world.

> Adrenaline rush

> The fact that they face potentially serious prison time for their digital crimes doesn't deter them. In fact, they may be getting their biggest adrenaline rush from the danger of what they're doing.

> And unfortunately, like many other authorities, Maloney believes that this kind of hacking activity will only get worse.

> How could it be otherwise? As computers and computer networks gain in power and speed, they are becoming central to the lives of ever-larger numbers of people, including ever-larger numbers of social misfits.

> Why don't we defend ourselves?

> Can the forces of good, i.e., the computer and security experts, manage to keep us at least one step ahead of these cybernuts? That topic is the subject of hot debate right now. But one thing's for sure: the hackers aren't going away.

> That fact brings me to the final question I put to my renowned expert: Why don't we defend ourselves better?

> Certainly, by now, we know enough about the dangers of opening attachments and e-mail sent by persons unknown to know better. So why do people still do it?

> We've yet to hear an answer for that one.

> Marcia Clark is a California lawyer and former member of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office Major Crimes Unit. There, she handled more than 20 murder cases, including that against O.J. Simpson. Author of the best-selling book Without Doubt, she is currently Of Counsel with the Law Offices of Judith R. Forman in Los Angeles, where she specializes in family law. Clark also has been a national spokeswoman on a variety of women's issues, including domestic violence.