There is an old Chinese curse that can be paraphrased as “May you live in interesting times”.  With the omnipresence of the Internet in our everyday lives I believe that we are now living in “interesting times.”

In the early 90’s during the infancy of the Internet there was no real commercial utilization of the network.  You could look at artwork that was in Paris, research topics at a university in Sweden or even check on how much coffee was in a coffeepot in England but you couldn’t buy flowers or books or pizza.  It was entertaining; it was fun, but that has all changed in the past few years.  Now the Internet is big business and with big business comes big bucks.

It is still a new frontier much like the days when folks used cross the country in stagecoaches.  There is a sizeable amount of opportunity, a vast world where you can setup shop and catch the eye of those cyber-wagon trains passing by your virtual town.  OK, I promise that will be the last of my “information superhighway” metaphors in this article as I am about as sick of them as you, but I think you get my point that it is a wild and wooly cyber-world with lots of opportunity.  Of course, it is important to note that the Internet has it’s own fair share of nefarious individuals as well and much like the days of the wild west, law enforcement is spread a little thin and having a bit of trouble keeping up with all the entrepreneurial criminals that are out there.

The Internet has now entered a new age with the creation of the cyber-terrorist that is both willing and able to attack and electronically destroy that little shop on the corner you so lovingly setup.  It’s a dangerous new era with little risk of being caught and enormous amounts of money at stake for the business owner.  Take the recent attacks against Yahoo and E*Trade that took their sites offline.  With sites like Yahoo brining in nearly $2 million each day it is conceivable that some cyber-punk will figure out that he could hold these companies hostage for money.  It’s not even all that complicated to pull off.  You don’t need to be a computing wizard to cook up cyber-terrorism scheme, just access to the Internet.  There are plenty of freely available tools that make it possible for even a relative newbie to pull off the crime of the century and the risk that they will be caught is small enough that it is starting to gain some appeal.  Can you imagine some 13-year-old holding Ebay hostage?  “Hey mister, your money or your site!”

Or how about a protection racket in cyberspace?  Now some surly mobster could conceivably tell a company, “Hey, were just looking out for your well being here.  We would hate to have anything bad happen to your business.”  I can even picture the big grin on his face complete with gold caps on one of his front teeth.  They wouldn’t even have to hire big burley guys to break the place up as any geek with a Macintosh could do the job and leave little or no trace.

The online music shop CD Universe already experienced similar cyber-extortion when a computer interloper demanded $100,000 or he would release the credit card numbers of the company’s customers on the Net.  The interloper had copied 300,000 credit-card numbers from CD Universe’s file servers and was holding them hostage.  CD Universe refused to pay and the extortionist released around 25,000 of the stolen numbers.  Not exactly the kind of positive PR that encourages customers to shop with you.

Make no mistake; extortion, embezzlement, forgery and other crimes are coming to the Net.  Don’t get me wrong I am not trying to discourage or frighten you from doing business on the Net. On the contrary, there is a wealth of opportunity to be had for all who wish to participate in e-commerce. I just want to educate and encourage those wanting to get into e-commerce to be very savvy and sober in their decisions.  No longer can you just get some mom and pop ISP to host your site if you want to deal with money and credit cards.  You will need to do business with experienced web hosting companies with a proven track record in e-commerce.  Take the time to educate yourself to the realities of the issue by reading up on books like “Maximum Security, second edition” (ISBN 0-672-31341-3).  This book takes are realistic look from the perspective of a convicted hacker and provides a wealth of information for those trying to secure their computer, network or web site. You might also want to check out Network Intrusion Detection, An Analyst’s Handbook by Stephen Northcutt (ISBN 0-7357-0868-1).  Do the homework and don’t get fooled by the so-called security experts that are popping up everywhere like television evangelists.  Ask for references and check their resume diligently and if they were a Y2K consultant, run away screaming.