PROLOGUE

and password details. If the recipient falls for the ruse, then the spammer can use these to access some or all of your Internet accounts. The Brazilian hackers demonstrated step-by-step how they secured tens of millions of dollars for themselves from bank accounts in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

I then visited the cybercops in Brasilia who had busted four other members of their criminal group (although at least twice that number were never tracked down by the police), and then I interviewed the chief of X-Force, the covert-operations department of the American computer security company, ISS. In the space of about a week I realised that conventional or traditional organised crime, colourful and varied though it was, carried with it significantly greater risks for the perpetrators than for those engaged in cybercrime.

Old-fashioned organised-crime groups, attached to the technology and means of the twentieth century, need to overcome two daunting hurdles if they are to make a success of their chosen profession. The police represent their primary business risk. The efficacy of law enforcement varies both geographically and time. Organised-crime groups adapt themselves to these changing conditions and choose one of a number of methods of dealing with the forces of law and order. They can attempt to outmuscle them; they can corrupt them; they can corrupt politicians exercising authority over the police; or they can evade detection.

Then they face a second problem: threats posed by the competition, other bad guys trawling for prey in the same waters. Here again they can attempt to outmuscle them; they can suggest forming an alliance; or they might agree to be absorbed by them.

In neither case, however, can the criminal syndicate simply ignore them - that way lies failure, with sometimes fatal results. Key to survival and prosperity is the ability to communicate with your fellow criminals and with the police - and, indeed, to send the correct messages to both groups.

In Brazil, I learned very quickly that twenty-first-century crime is different.

Most importantly, it is much much harder to identify when people are up to no good on the Web. Laws governing the Internet vary greatly from country to country. This matters because in general a criminal act over the Web will be perpetrated from an IP (Internet Protocol)