Madalin is right when saying the Romanian Mass Media had a major impact over the under performance of E-commerce, because of the hype around hackers’ actions. Every time a Romanian Hacker “does something” is very media-exposed and that’s why Romanians are so afraid paying different things online. [ The same men pays in on Romanian websites 5% with card and on foreign websites 80% ].

A short history of Romanian Top Hackers ( source: Ziarul Financiarul.com )

• November 1999 – Pentaguard ( togheter with some Russian hackers) started the so-called “World Wide Web War”, and they attacked and cracked governmental and military networks in USA and China, destroying 21 servers
• September 2002 – George Badea and Constantin David entered since 1999 in Ingram Micro Corp’s servers, where they bought computer parts tens of thousands USD on other clients accounts.
• March 2004 – Dumitru Ciobanu spread a computer worm named W32/Blaster-F that affected thousand of computers
• December 2006 – Victor Faur (known as Metal ) cracked NASA network, US Marine network and National Energy Dept. network. He provoked lost data in 150 computers, value of 1,5 mil USD.
• May 2007 – TJ Maxx  Case. The biggest IT fraud in the world. Over 1 billion USD stolen from 45 millions of cards over 500.000 clients of TJ Maxx retailer. The Romanians had access for 2 years.
• October 2007 – Florin Fechete over 125k theft on eBay, with 16 false identities
• April 2008 Vlad Duiculescu alias “Vladutz”, cracked eBay and make over 2 millions fraud.