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APPROACHING ZERO

Though it's difficult to accept the number as anything more than a 'best guess', its precision has given the figure a spurious legitimacy. It is used, mantra-like, in most surveys of computer crime in the US and has even crept into US government and court documents.

As for hacker-generated credit card fraud, the amount is even more difficult to estimate. Fraud is fraud; credit card companies define it by the methods used by the perpetrator. However, in 1990, of the $301 million lost by MasterCard in the US to fraud, some $26 million occurred through telephone sales and $33 million by counterfeiting - the practice of superimposing a stolen number on an old card. Both these ploys are used by hackers. If it is assumed that 10 per cent of the fraud through telephone sales and counterfeiting is due to hackers, then hacker-generated credit card fraud could amount to as much as $5.9 million in the US, on MasterCard alone. If one wants to assume that hackers are responsible for 20 per cent of such fraud, then the figure is doubled.

The blunt truth is that no one can be certain what computer fraud of any sort really costs. All anyone knows is that it goes on.

Leslie Lynne Doucette was once described as 'the female Fagin' of the computer underworld. In her mid-thirties, she was considerably older than the 150 or so adolescent Olivers she gathered into her ring. As a woman, she has the distinction of being one of only two or three female hackers who have ever come to the attention of the authorities.

In 1989 Doucette lived in an apartment in a 1930s block on North Ashland in Chicago. It was the sort of neighbourhood that had seen better days; the block was substantial, though showing the first signs of neglect. Despite having what the police like to term 'no visible means of support,' Doucette provided for herself and her two children, paid the rent and kept up with the bills. Her small apartment was filled with electronic gear: personal computer equipment, modems, automatic diallers and other telecom peripherals.

Doucette was a professional. She operated a scheme dealing in stolen access codes: credit cards, telephone cards (from AT&T, MCI, Sprint and ITT) as well as Private Branch Exchange (PBX) access codes, computer passwords and codes for voice mail (VM) computers.

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