Stock brokers ETrade and Ameritrade recently announced that over the last three months hackers managed to steal more than $22 million by hacking into user accounts and conducting numerous unauthorized stock trades.

What makes the crime a little unusual is that the hackers didn't use the attack to directly steal information or money, but instead hijacked legitimate customer accounts to conduct multiple "pump and dump" trades - trading in a little known stock in order to push up the price and then sell previously-held stock for an inflated profit.

And the hackers were able to bypass the extensive security measures of both brokerages by targeting the weakest link - installing password stealing keyloggers on the PCs of brokerage customers. The best security measures can always be undone by careless computer users. And when hackers break into your computer it doesn't really matter if your computer is the target or simply used as a tool in another scam, someone's always going to pay.