Durban-Crime syndicates are using children as young as 12 to hack into business computer systems and steal valuable information. And authorities are powerless to prosecute them because of loopholes in the law, Wimpie Britz, managing director of Computer Security and Forensic Solutions, told the second World Conference on Crime which started in Durban This is an easy way of gaining valuable information at a very cheap rate, he said, highlighting an investigation, which exposed a cyber-crime syndicate, which paid a 12-year-old R10 000 to download information from South African business. Once the information was handed over, it was sold to a rival company for about R10- million. R10 000 is not a lot of money for the syndicate but it is a lot of money for the child, said Britz. Cyber crime was on the increase primarily because children were becoming more computer literate and saw it as a challenge to get into closed Internet sites or private computer systems. Hense, they were easy targets for crime computer systems. Hense, they were easy targets for crime There was no physical threat involved, in that hackers worked from computers which would be anywhere in the world. Businesses in the private sector were losing thousands of rands; contracts, deals and information through this type of crime, and law enforcement workers were powerless to do anything about it. According to Britz, Internet banking is not secure as people were led to believe, because a persons credit card information could be accessed easily. Robbers use to go into a bank and hold it up. Nowadays they sit behind a computer and transfer money to other accounts in a matter of minutes.

By Jillian Green