The news announcment from US Department of Justice from last night makes a fascinating read.

The DOJ has finished a three-month operation, during which they investigated a wide range of online crime, from phishing cases to DDoS extortion, botnet operations and spamming.

Some sample cases:


- Case Calin Mateias aka "Metal". A Romanian hacker who hacked Ingram Micro's online ordering system to steal hardware worth over $10 million

- A Ukrainian hacker, who was selling stolen credit card numbers by the thousands over IRC chats

- A Romanian gang selling non-existing goods in online auctions

- Mr. Jay Echouafni, the CEO of satellite receiver reseller Orbit Communication was charged for hiring hackers to launch DDoS attacks against their competitors. The idea was to take down the online ordering systems of other large satellite operators.

Things like these are really happening out there. In fact, we're currently aware of one DDoS attack apparently arranged by a company specializing in clip-art graphics (of all things) against their competitor.