It's a stylistic flourish that dates back to the days when reporters would file stories they typed out on typewriters. (Quick show of hands: How many of you still know how to change typewriter ribbons? OK, how many of you worked with typewriters in the first place? Never mind.)
Within the journalism profession, it's become a tradition to label your farewell piece as the -30- column. Explanations vary. The one that I most like equates the number with a "sign of completion."
That's a nice poetic approach, though it's only nine years since I arrived at CNET in late 2000. Some of you may recall that I came over when ZDNet got acquired in a merger of two of the tech industry's biggest Internet publishers. Just in time for the bubble to burst and the economy to go bust. Nine years later and I'm changing company logos again--again just in time for the bubble to burst and the economy to go bust. Well, I was never very good about timing, but as the prophet says, this, too, shall pass.
Why, then, after all this time, am I bidding CNET News readers farewell? It has nothing to do with boredom. The story line that defines the technology business remains as fascinating as it was in 1985. That's when I began covering the retail side of the computer business for a trade weekly. (A weekly! How quaint.) Though I never did a statistical study, I'm willing to wager that this industry remains chockablock with more smart and interesting people per capita than any other. State secret: I always counted on being the dumbest person in the room during an interview. If I was sharp, it meant that I'd walk away having learned something new. How many people can look forward to the same?
Since I can hear the copy desk already grumbling "get to the 'lede' already," let's get to the meat of the matter. Yours truly is moving over to work on the CBS News Web site, where I'll be working on a terrifically exciting project. There will be more to say about that at a later time. What's more, I'm not going to completely disappear from the map. Fact is that you will still see my byline gracing CNET News from time to time (CBS, you'll remember, owns CNET), though this will be it as a regular gig for Coop's Corner.
Spring has finally sprung out here in San Francisco and I won't spoil it all by turning mawkish. Besides, you'll know where to find me. But before signing off one final time, I must tip my hat and acknowledge you, the readers, for making this one very rewarding ride. Sometimes we agreed, other times we parted ways, but throughout my tenure, your feedback always informed my writing and thinking. Even if I fell short the first time, your input helped me better approach a topic the next time around. It was a dialectic that I found invaluable.
Then again, isn't that the beauty of the Internet?
-30-
SAN FRANCISCO--The FBI agent whose undercover sting operation led to the dismantling of an international cybercrime ring believes that increasing transnational police cooperation is turning the tide against digital criminals.
J. Keith Mularski, a special agent who works in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, says that when it comes to fighting cybercrime, the bad guys may still hold a technological upper hand but that the good guys are getting better.
"We're not far behind," says Mularski, who spent a couple of years infiltrating a crime network that offered a range of stolen data--including credit card numbers, bank numbers and personal log-in information--to buyers online. The Web site, DarkMarket.ws, got shut down last October after a German radio network broke the news about the sting operation.
"I wouldn't say that we're winning the battle," said Mularski. Still, he insisted that law enforcement agencies are catching up. "I expect to see great strides" in the near term, he said.
So far, Mularski said police authorities around the world have arrested 60 people in connection with the FBI's targeting of DarkMarket. Despite what clearly marks a big victory, this remains a very long and complicated battle against shadowy opponents. What's more, the traffic in stolen IDs has grown into a multimillion business dominated by crime figures from the Russian mob.
Shutting them down is a matter of luck and perseverance and security experts liken the effort to a game of Whac-a-Mole, where underground forums easily emerge to serve as clearing houses or virtual supermarkets for myriad criminal activities over the Internet.
"The Russians got involved in cybercrime in the early 1990s and organized around software-based piracy," said Dmitri Alperovitch, an executive at the software security firm McAfee.
Since then, he said, Russian organized crime organizations have become more adept, moving on to financial fraud through the use of Internet worms and phishing attempts. He estimated that as much as 70 percent of the spam now sent over the Internet bears the fingerprints of Russian cybercriminals.
Making a rare public appearance at a San Francisco security conference hosted by RSA, Mularski said the plan to infiltrate that closely-knit network was predicated on winning the trust of the other members and that only took place over a period of months. He began his undercover work by assuming the nickname "Master Splinter," based on a character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon--"My son is a 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle' fan," he said--and then becoming a participant in the various groups and forums on the DarkMarket site.
The FBI's big break came when DarkMarket got hit by a denial-of-service attack launched by a rival online site. By this time, Mularski, or "Master Splinter," had built up a reputation with the roughly 2,500 people who were members and had even been appointed to be a discussion moderator.
"I said that I was good at securing sites and said we can move (DarkMarket) to my server," he said.
They agreed and the FBI now had hosted one of the world's biggest one-stop shops for conducting ID theft.
Tallying up the results of the sting operation, Mularski said the FBI had prevented more than $70 million in potential economic loss at banks and brokerages. It also collected six complete new malware packages while recovering data on more than 100,000 credit cards.
"It was a great operation, especially internationally," Mularski said, sharing credit with transnational law enforcement agencies from the United Kingdom to Ukraine. As for Russia, he said interaction with local authorities was improving markedly and predicted that "in the future, you'll see more cooperation."
Back from vacation and it's grand to see that the blabosphere's obsession du jour with all things Twitter remains as rabid as ever. For a while, at least, I suppose it elbows aside the other obsession du jour--the truly distressing state of newspaperdom--at least until word of the inevitable next bankruptcy hits the wire.
But with all due respect to the armchair commentariat, I'm sure there's something more interesting to write about in the wider world of technology. You