I know that I am morally obliged as a journalist to write some sort of predictions or "year that was" column before New Year's Eve, but I must put that off at least one more day to expound on a fun security report put out earlier this month by my friends at McAfee under the super-scintillating title: "McAfee Virtual Criminology Report: Organised Crime And the Internet."

OK, so the title does say exactly what the security report is about, I'll give them that. Although the mysterious British/Canadian spelling of "organized" is puzzling. Wait, aha, this is mainly about European trends in cybercrime. Still, for those among us who care about security (and who doesn't, really?), the report purports to step into the minds of those cybercriminal evil-doers that McAfee and all the other security technology companies are attempting to protect us against.

First off, can you say young? It's not enough that we have to worry about our young people getting sucked into street gangs, now, McAfee finds, teenagers as young as 14 are being lured by the celebrity status of cyber-gangs at a faster rate than ever to become cybercriminals. Apparently the typical hacker is between 14 and 19 years old. (This actually doesn't really surprise me, when you think back to the early days of the PC and pioneers like Steve Wozniak who skirted the law in the spirit of innovation.)

Here's a tidbit that's particularly thought-provoking. When a group of computer science students at Purdue University were asked if they had participated in any "deviant" behavior on their computers -- activities such as guessing passwords, reading someone else's files, writing or using a computer virus, stealing credit card numbers and so on -- fully 88 percent of them answered "yes."

McAfee has come up with a cybercriminal food chain in this report. Here's the hierarchy: Innovators, the Amateur Fame Seekers, the Copy-Catters, the Insiders and the Organized Cyber-Gangsters.

As far as the crimes these cybercriminals commit, here's what's up and coming:

1) More of them are moving to public Internet access spots as their place of "business."

2) Profile information from online social networking communities is becoming more vulnerable.

3) Mobile devices are being targeted more often, and SMS or text messaging has become a favored point of exploitation.

4) Small businesses and individuals are more likely to be victims (there were roughly 17,000 phishing reports per month in 2006).

5) Criminals are collaborating, ala a sort of "malware mafia." Is it time for a new "Godfather" movie?

The good news is that widespread virus outbreaks declined dramatically this year.

The whitepaper is chuck full of extra statistics and things to think about if you run a security practice. I'd definitely encourage you to give it a read.

What's on your mind this week? E-mail me at hclancy@cmp.com.