Online crime is becoming big business, and most of the practitioners are coming out of Russia (and Eastern Europe) and China. The Russian hackers are going after money, protected by powerful Russian criminal gangs and police who are having a hard time keeping up with the technology. The Chinese are going after commercial and government secrets, and are trying to be quiet about it.

The Russians are behind the most serious credit card and banking scams, as well as money laundering. China is apparently behind the sudden surge of malware that sneaks into PCs and tries to steal passwords and documents. One family of Internet worms, Myfip, has been traced back to China. Whats interesting about Myfip, is that is has been modified to search out industrial secrets from computer industry companies. It has also been found trying to get into government and military computer networks. The Chinese deny any involvement, and claim that others (outside of China) are simply routing their attacks through China. How convenient.

A Chinese firm recently released an unauthorized version of the an older American designed CPU (the ten year old American MIPS R10000). The Chinese version, the Godson-2, was designed by a member of the government controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences. What a coincidence. The Chinese insist that the Godson-2 is only "MIPS like."