Hacking is a business -- and business is good

Parents freaked out when hackers stole millions of records from VTech, a Hong Kong-based toy maker. Because the records included information on at least 200,000 children, those mothers and fathers were probably more worried about kidnappings and child pornography than financial mischief.

But hacks like the attack on VTech are almost never related to violent crimes -- they're about money. Though the hackers' haul didn't include credit card numbers, the data dump was likely a precursor to a serious financial hack enabled by the personal information stolen from VTech, says Amit Ashbel, a cyber security analyst at Checkmarx, an application security firm.

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