They may not have the skillz of their Eastern European counterparts, but Brazilian crackers live in a country with lax computer crime laws, and so operate with a greater degree of impunity. Xatrix Security reports that November's top ten most active cracking groups are all from Brazil. "As a result," the report says, "Portuguese has now become the lingua franca of the
hacking underground."
Indeed, in yet another case of international computer crime, a security company in South Africa has busted a Brazilian cracking group called, in a 1337 speak tribute to Unix, r00t3rs.
IOL coverage of this particular development is here.