What are the top problems reported?

O'Brien: Now there is a profit motive. Take botnets, for example, [where the creator is] leasing out part of the botnet for use in some other type of crime. That's a relatively new evolution of the old crimes.

Day: Denial-of-service attacks were a problem a long time ago. Then companies got wise. They altered the network management, and it became not much of a problem. Then the botnets came on, and you've got thousands of compromised computers all over the world now attacking a site that your network isn't going to be able to handle. They're too big, and so the denial-of-service attack has once again become something that you have to be very concerned about. The botnets, where you have thousands of compromised computers, are just that powerful.

What have been your most notorious cases?

Heron: The largest consumer fraud in the U.S. was committed by the Gambino crime family. The loss was approximately US$250 million dollars in an Internet fraud. They took a two-pronged approach. One was offering these free tours of adult Internet sites and then asking for a credit card for age-verification purposes. Nothing legitimate is going to come out of a question like that.