And it may take even longer to bring the offenders to justice. The federal investigation is complicated by the international nature of high-profile digital heists. The perpetrators are likely located overseas, which makes extradition and prosecution difficult. As a result, the Secret Service is focused on monitoring the online activities of its suspects, in hopes that they'll be able to arrest them at an opportune moment, says Ari Baranoff, an assistant special agent in charge with the Secret Service's criminal investigative division. "We take a lot of pride in having a lot of patience," Baranoff said during a rare sit-down interview with the Associated Press at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "There are individuals we've apprehended that we've known about for 10 years and we're very comfortable indicting these individuals, sitting back and waiting patiently until the opportunity arrives that we can apprehend them."
Target says it can't yet estimate what the breach will cost the company, but some analysts put it at close to half a billion dollars. The total cost of the breach -which also would include losses incurred by banks, consumers and others- could easily reach into the billions of dollars. Target, which is in the midst of its own investigation, has said very little about how the breach happened, except that it believes the thieves gained entry to its systems by infiltrating computers owned by one of its vendors, thought to be a Pittsburgh-area heating and refrigeration business.
Baranoff couldn't speak specifically about the federal investigation into the Target breach, since the case is ongoing, but he talked candidly about the growing threat of large-scale, financially motivated cybercrimes and the Secret Service's efforts to stop them. Behind every major breach, there's usually a team of highly specialized cybercriminals who mainly know each other through online nicknames and reputations. Most aren't motivated by politics, just greed, Baranoff says. If the hackers do invest in anything, it's their own operations. An increasing number are building their own server farms, sometimes leasing space to other criminals, making it harder for law enforcement to track them down.
Further complicating matters, Baranoff says the vast majority of high-level cybercriminals tend to be Russian speakers based in former Soviet and Eastern European countries, which largely puts them out of the reach of U.S. authorities. But the Secret Service has strong ties with cybercrime agencies in many countries - including The Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom - and has found others to be helpful as well, even if they don't have extradition treaties with the United States. While best known for protecting the president of the United States, the U.S. Secret Service was originally formed in 1865 to investigate crimes related to counterfeit currency. The passage of the Patriot Act following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks expanded its role in investigating computer-related crimes.
MORE
