Cyber Cops Stymied by Elusive Hackers

Hardly a month has gone by this year without a multinational company such as Google, EMC or Sony disclosing it’s been hacked by cyber intruders who infiltrated networks or stole customer information. Yet no hacker has been publicly identified, charged or arrested. If past enforcement efforts are an indication, most of the perpetrators will never be prosecuted or punished.

"I don't have a high level of confidence that they will be brought to justice,” said Peter George, chief executive of Fidelis Security Systems Inc., a Bethesda, Maryland-based data protection consulting firm whose clients include International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), the U.S. Army and the Department of Commerce. “The government is doing what they can, but they need to do a lot more.” In the U.S., the FBI, the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies are confronting what amounts to a massive crime wave that’s highly organized and hard to combat with traditional methods. The hacker organizations are well-funded and global, eluding arrest except in the rarest of cases.