One in four US hackers is an FBI informer

THE IMPENETRABLE WORLD of the hacker is apparently anything but, as according to an investigation by the Guardian newspaper a quarter of them living in the US are working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers", the newspaper reported.

Having spoken with a number of experts in the area, the Guardian said that cyber policing units were so good, and so successful at weeding out hackers and crackers that they'd broken them. This means that rather than running away - hacking traffic lights as they go - some hackers are instead rolling over and providing information to the Feds.

"In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles," it added.

"In others, undercover FBI agents posing as 'carders' - hackers specialising in ID theft - have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars."

These activities suggest that US federal investigators are after low hanging fruit, as opposed to people with the technical chops to steal such information for themselves.

The spectre of black helicopters might deter some nefarious crackers though, and the Guardian fingered Adrian Lamo as at least one of its one in four.

Lamo, the paper reminds us, is the convicted hacker who grassed out Bradley Manning after the accused US Army whistleblower allegedly told him about passing documents to Wikileaks. µ