Fired hackers taking revenge on employers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber-terrorism Squad in Atlanta has noticed a "substantial increase" in computer security breaches coming from inside Atlanta companies that have made layoffs in the past six months.

The FBI does not release data on the number of security breaches it investigates, but the Atlanta field office has seen the number of reported computer-intrusion cases double each year for the past five years, said Special Agent David Ford, who oversees the regional Cyber-terrorism Squad. The FBI's Atlanta office currently has several hundred security breach cases under investigation or being prosecuted, he said.

"These are people who have lost their jobs and are losing their benefits, and they know the [company] systems better than anyone," Ford said. "A lot of it is revenge [for being laid off]. They take data with them, they take customer lists. They want to inflict harm before they go."

Some 50,000 Georgians have been laid off or fired since the spring and experts with the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University predict that figure will reach 125,000 before the economy improves and unemployment stabilizes in mid-2002.