well, hackers do use IRC... but so do lots of lamers, *******s, flamers, newbies, pr0n freaks.. should I go on?

I'd say that this article is just some person with a little face in the media trying to make a name for themself.. by, as souleman said above, mislabelling something...

notice how the article specifically targets IRC.... when there are lots of other chatrooms available... and I'm sure these 'hackers' might also use an AOL chatroom.. or a Yahoo chatroom... but lets not say that, because it would look bad for AOL Time warner to be associated with something that is abused for something as crap as CC theft...

If I was going to even take this article seriously, or this person, you would have to remove any reference to a specific chatroom, take out 'hackers', and then I might, JUST MIGHT, take it seriously...

if someone wants to be malicious, in any way, shape or form, and they want to discuss it... no one protocol or program is a 'market' for it... if they can communicate over it, you can be damn sure they'll use it...