Hacker pleads guilty to ID thefts netting millions

Albert Gonzalez recently pleaded guilty to nineteen criminal charges related to an enormous identity theft scheme. His offenses include conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, and access device fraud. Gonzalez worked with ten others from various countries to steal credit and debit card numbers from a number of retail companies. Albert and his co-conspirators used wardriving and packet sniffers to steal the information, and also engaged in ATM fraud by putting the stolen data on blank cards and making fraudulent withdraws.

Wardriving is the name for the practice of driving down a street with an open laptop, scanning for unsecured wireless networks, and a packet sniffer is a tool used to capture data being transmitted over a network. Both are practices used by hackers. What Albert Gonzalez did was clearly illegal, and caused financial damage to countless individuals. This serves as an example of what can happen when new technologies are used in unethical ways. But some of these same methods can be used in good ways too.

Computer hacking falls into two broad categories: black hat and white hat. Black hats like Gonzalez break into computer systems for their own gain, and generally without regard to the owners of the systems. Their actions can damage the systems they break into, and cause harm to others in the form of piracy, fraud, and identity theft. However, the same techniques used by the black hat hackers can be used for the good of society.

White hat hackers also breach computer security systems, but do so for non-malicious reasons. Sometimes the system the hacker breaks into is their own, other times they're hired to test the security of another person's system. They use the same tools and techniques as the black hats, but the end results are radically different. The techniques used in hacking can be used for ethical or unethical ways, it all depends on the user.

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Additional sources:
Hacker Pleads Guilty In Major Identify Theft
Remorseful hacker faces 25 years
Hacker (Computer security)