With all the youth naiveties
they may have had, however, those groups introduced an important
idea: Software was a green ?¬?eld for illicit activities, and
there was de?¬?nitely a good chance to make an easy pro?¬?t.
Sellers of cracked software at a fraction of the price found an
eager audience, especially because regulations (and enforcements)
in that space were in their infancy. Gathering more
crackers in groups noticeably improved their chances of gaining
a margin. Many contributors meant a larger catalog of cracked
Software offers
opportunities for
illicit gain
Cracking bands
were among the
?¬?rst to organize
around the purpose
of illicitly pro?¬?ting
from computers
The Advent of Pro?¬?table Digital Crime 7
products and dramatically simpli?¬?ed the cracker??™s curse of those
days: distribution.
In summary, crackers learned the following during that period:
Software is a good that can be stolen.
Circumventing software protections is possible.
Coordinated action boosts pro?¬?ts.
This last item was particularly remarkable when you consider
the fact that it was still a disconnected world.
The Vandalism and Bravado Era: Viruses and Worms
If piracy was the natural extension of the traditional compulsion
to steal, we may think of computer virus writing as a form of
vandalism.
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