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According to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the true extent of cyber crime may be impossible to judge.

“A lot of these cyber attacks go undetected and unreported because the victims are frightened to report them,” said Lieberman Monday during a Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Lieberman explained that cyber crooks had sophisticated methods, such as commandeering an unknowing individual's computer to traffic money.

Lieberman said that in 2007, the TJX Corporation, a leading retailing organization, experienced a breach of its wireless networks in which up to 94 million credit and debit card numbers were put the at risk of being used illegally.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is the Committee's ranking member, pointed to computer hacker Albert Gonzalez, who was indicted in August for his alleged involvement in the largest credit and debit breach ever in the United States, as a symbol for how dangerous cyber crime has become. Gonzalez pleaded guilty recently to charges stemming from the theft of tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from the computers of several major retailers. Authorities believe this was not Gonzalez’s only major cyber crime.

“Protecting our cyberspace has become critically important. In the past 18 months, this Committee has held three hearings on the topic of cyber security,” said Collins.

The witnesses at Monday's hearing included Philip Reitinger, deputy undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate for Homeland Security Department; Michael Merritt, assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service’s Office of Investigations; William Nelson, president and CEO of Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center; and Robert Carr, chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.