The FBI has urged Congress to "consider" expanding the Rackeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization laws to use them against organized and persistent computer hackers. They also urge federal lawmakers to reduce the minimum $5,000 damages victim companies suffer before attackers can be prosecuted under federal law, the Associated Press reports.
FBI director Louis Freeh told Capitol Hill lawmakers Feb. 16 they should consider "whether some of this activity, which goes beyond a single episode of fraud or hacking, gets into the realm of enterprise criminal activity.'' RICO is used ordinarily against large drug cartels and the Mafia.
Also testifying to a Senate committee was Attorney General Janet Reno, who says some hackers disguise their e-fingerprints enough to make "it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to hold the perpetrator criminally accountable. I would simply say that we are taking the attacks very seriously and that we will simply do everything in our power to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.''
Concerning last week's spam-bomb denial of service attacks against high-profile Web sites, Freeh testified that there ``fast-developing leads as we speak, and hopefully we can provide more details in coming days,'' the AP says. He says FBI field offices in five cities are probing the attacks: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston and Seattle, with more agents in other cities and abroad joining in, the AP says.
Both Freeh and Reno told lawmakers there were "important shortcomings" in coordinating government agencies and public and private experts who help probe high-tech crime. ``We're not doing so good,'' says Freeh, but he added that cooperation was improving, the AP says.
Some Internet watchers snorted at the idea of expanding RICO to get the hackers. "RICO was intended to get gangsters,'' said Jennifer Granick, a California lawyer who has represented hackers, to the lawmakers. ``Now, it's getting a bunch of kids in black concert T-shirts.''
Meanwhile, eBay has disclosed new details about the DOS attack it suffered Feb. 8, shutting down the world's largest Internet auction site for almost two hours. Its attorney, Robert Chesnut, described for lawmakers an ``insidious, organized attack'' that was ``obviously well planned.'' He said the hackers flooded eBay's site with ten times its normal incoming data, transmitting a specific type of information identical to that used against Yahoo! the day before.
He told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary that eBay was also hit Feb. 9, but engineers turned that attack back quickly.
