Internet Security

Came across this disturbing story:

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents.

Reading the comments from people who sound like they know something about this sort of thing, it may be a hoax. But the web page was definitely "broken into".

As we come to rely more and more on the internet for everything from dating to banking and medical records, it's becoming more obvious that our laws have not kept up with the technology. I've read that 95% of internet traffic is spam. If the truth is one-twentieth of that, it's still ridiculous. There need to be very serious consequences for people involved in this sort of stuff.