Hey, guess what? It appears that software piracy is becoming a thing of the past! That’s pretty cool, right? We have cloud computing to thank for that, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella. Elinor Mills at CNET attended Symantec’s Norton Cyber Crime Day, where she heard him speak and wrote about it late last week.

The reasons why are pretty simple: Software developers (developers, developers, developers — sorry, I still can’t help it. Thanks, Mr. Balmer) are switching to a downloadable software model. So there are fewer discs that can be copied. And with IT services heading toward cloud computing, people won’t need to install much software on their computers at all. Again, fewer hard copies of software to be pirated.

But, as you may expect, there’s a downside. Isn’t there always?

Parrella feels that the concentration of software in data centers means those facilities will be the most likely targets of attack in years to come. There are already huge botnets made up of zombie computers poised to take action. Stolen data will be the prize. That data could be pirated. Mills quoted FBI Agent Donna Peterson as saying this kind of theft is increasing in popularity.

In fact, these criminals are getting more sophisticated to the point where within a matter of a few weeks they can be inside a system without the owner knowing it. It’s possible for employees to come in on Monday to find out that the company’s assets were wiped out over the weekend.

I think I just became a Luddite.

Interested in learning more about cybercrime? Take a look at these articles from HowStuffWorks.com:

How Phishing Works
How Zombie Computers Work
Is cyberwar coming?