Albert Gonzalez: The hacker who duped the Secret Service

Albert Gonzalez is the Al Capone of computer criminals, said James Verini in The New York Times Magazine. For several years, the 29-year-old hacker presided over Shadowcrew.com, an underground site where sophisticated cybercrooks sold databases of stolen credit cards. He was arrested while “cashing out” with a stack of blank debit cards with stolen card numbers, and was later offered a deal to become a paid informant for the U.S. Secret Service. For years, he used his reputation to turn in fellow “black hats,” hackers who hated corporations. “It was kind of easy,’’ Gonzalez says of the undercover work. “When someone trusts you, they let their guard down.” But he soon began to play both sides. “My loyalty was to the black-hat community,” he says. And so while still in the government’s employ, he hacked into 180 million accounts, stealing untold millions in the biggest credit-card theft in history. He was finally caught, and is now serving two concurrent 20-year sentences. “I’ve been asking myself why I did it,” says Gonzalez. “Whatever morality I should have been feeling was trumped by the thrill. I blame nobody but myself.”