flynn23 wrote:

U.S. financial institutions reported a sizable increase last year in the number of computer intrusions that led to online bank account takeovers and stolen funds, according to data obtained by Security Fix. The data also suggest such incidents are becoming far more costly for banks, businesses and consumers alike.

I'm telling you (as in whoever will listen to me), this is going to seriously undermine the whole economy . Particularly when these types of breaches affect trading markets, it will create FUD about the validity of the market. This is why the Prez has suddenly taken such a serious interest in creating cyber-defense.

1. The rise in the amount stolen in computer intrusions referenced here is startling for a single year.
2. The author's graph shows intrusions merely returning to 2004 levels, in spite of the spin of the article. I'm more curious why the total went down rather than why it went up. I think that it has to do with worms in 2004, and the fact that they became a mostly solved problem, but I'm guessing. Either way this undermines the author's core perspective.
3. There are lots of spam based stock market scams. There is money to be made through fake stock journalism, but I'm not convinced that the amount of people who fall for this kind of campaign is large enough to cause general uncertainty in the market. Real market scams, like those that have unfolded in the mortgage industry in the past few months, are more sophisticated.
4. The cyber-defence is focused on China. These financial scams are out of Russia and its European neighbors.