Money Alone Not Enough to
Motivate Data Theft
The theft scenario explored in
“The Illusion of Security” (Mar.
2008) by David Wright et al. was
realistic, with one exception,
though it didn’t detract from the
article’s conclusions. Wright et al.
wrote: “A third driver, not so dissimilar from the first, is that the
data thieves are also impelled by
the profit motive.” The thieves in
this case were employees who disappeared one day and some time
later turned up in Costa Rica.
PAUL WA TSON
I realize the scenario was abbreviated, with many details omitted,
but after having interviewed more
than 200 computer criminals in
my own studies (see Crime by
Computer, Scribners, 1976, and
Fighting Computer Crime,
Scribners, 1983), I conclude that few
computer criminals are indeed
motivated purely by profit.
Employees become criminals during employment mostly to solve
personal problems that may
involve money, sabotage, or espionage. They are often motivated
by debt, relationships gone bad
with other employees or spouses,
personal dissatisfaction, or an
attempt to hide poor or unethical
business decisions. If the thieves
cited in the article were motivated
by profit alone, staying with the
company and surreptitiously selling its products and services under
the table and engaging in
accounts-receivable or -payable
fraud, their behavior would likely
be less dangerous and obviate the
need to flee. On the other hand,
they may have been in touch from
the start with a buyer interested in
the whole database who initiated
the theft. However, I have found
that collusion between two perpetrators is rare and among three
rarer still when IT is involved. It
usually takes only a single person
with the proper skills, knowledge,
resources, authority, motives, and
objectives.
DONN B. PARKER
Los Altos, CA
COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS
FOR DISPARATE PROBLEMS
Peter Denning’s and Peter
Yaholkovsky’s “The Profession of
IT” column “Getting to ‘We’”
(Apr. 2008) was especially interesting in terms of open-source development. Although both authority
and competition have a place in
vibrant open-source communities,
it is surprising how often collaborative solutions satisfy disparate
needs. For example, both SMP
scalability and real-time response
are sometimes improved by
changing the kernel’s synchronization design.
I cannot say whether the five
stages of collaboration outlined in
the column apply directly to open
source but attest to the effectiveness of the third stage: “listen to
and learn all perspectives.” I’m
intrigued by how “declare” and
“connect” might by undertaken by
a new generation that has grown
up with the Internet.
PAUL E. MCKENNEY
Beaverton, OR
DISK INCREASES SIZE OF
MEMORY-LIMITED SEARCHES
I agree wholeheartedly with
Daniel Kunkle’s and Gene Cooperman’s “Viewpoint” “Solving
Rubik’s Cube: Disk Is the New
RAM” (Apr. 2008). In fact, my
co-authors and I have been developing disk-based search algorithms and using them to solve
combinatorial problems since
2002. For example, the well-known Towers of Hanoi problem