Overheard: We don’t need no stinkin’ credit card. Give us your e-mail address book.

Elite cybergangs can no longer make great money stealing and selling personal identity data. Thousands of small-time, copycat data thieves have oversaturated the market, driving prices to commodity levels. Credit card account numbers that once fetched $100 or more, for instance, can be had for $10 or less. Gunter Ollmann as quoted in Internet thieves make big money stealing corporate info

The most fertile turf: AOL, Yahoo and MSN instant messaging; YahooMail, HotMail and Gmail; and MySpace and FaceBook, the free tools that on any given day you’ll find open on millions of workplace PCs. The most coveted loot: e-mail address books, instant-messaging buddy lists, PowerPoint slide presentations, engineering drawings, partnership agreements, price lists, bid proposals, supply contracts, executive e-mail exchanges and the like.

USA Today has put together an interesting overview on where the dollars are today in cybercrime.  Gunter Ollmann is the chief security strategist at IBM ISS, IBM’s tech security division.