Spooks and Hackers Inc

Eye-catching quote in the Info Week story on Internet theft: Another threat is the growing number of information brokers who use online communications to match buyers and sellers. An increasing number of these brokers -- many of whom are former government intelligence employees in the United States and Eastern Europe -- work closely with hackers dealing in illicit data. "The biggest security problem organizations face today is information brokers," says Dan White, national director of information security at Ernst & Young in Chicago. "Since the end of the Cold War there have been a lot of people trained in espionage who don't have a lot to do."