Crime Online.(what the world will look like in 2012)(Brief Article)

Hackers are everywhere. In a recent FBI survey, nine out of 10 businesses, schools and government agencies had detected computer- security breaches within the previous 12 months, with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The online crime wave stems in part from the tech-boom rush to get software to market without regard to security. As the Internet evolves into the Grid, cybercrime is likely to get a whole lot worse. "The vast majority of crimes in the future will have some cyber component," says Michael Vatis, a former director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. "There will be machine-to-machine mobile attacks, thieves using computers to break down physical barriers [like alarm systems] and evidence gathered by tracking trails of digital data left by perpetrators."

The real concern for 2012 will be the ability of hackers to take control of mechanical devices. On the Grid, not only could a hacker potentially break into an auto company's database via the wireless unit in one of its cars, it's conceivable ...