A Look Inside the Bustling Cybercrime Marketplace

wiredmikey writes "Cybercrime's underground activity, much like a Middle Eastern bazaar, is a loud and boisterous market. Buying, selling, haggling and cheating all take place in these marketplaces. Each marketplace houses other specialized-markets of illegitimate goods. There's the credit cards market, the bot rental market, another one for viruses, and one more for the credentials – to name a few. The column discusses how cybercriminals communicate, how these markets operate and how hacker transactions are being performed."

No way...

[Anonymous Coward]

So these people on the internet are using forums, IRC, IMs, and Facebook to communicate? GET OUT.

Don't bother RTFA

[Zedrick]

What nonsense. The author basically says that the "hackers" are using the internet to communicate. And makes silly claims like "While ["hacker"] forums are picked up by search engines".... I've never come accross a CC forum that doesn't disallow searchengines from indexing the real stuff in robots.txt.

securityweek.com - yet another site with writers who don't know their subject.

Fluff Article

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'article' is horrible and pointless. I can summarise everything that has been said in one sentence.

Criminals use IRC, IM, Forums and Social Networking to communicate.

The information about payment methods is vague to the point of irrelevance. Stop putting this sort of fluff on the front page to fill in space and actually put up a real article for once.

Re:

[SJ2000]

Problem is, I do, and it rarely get's published which makes this shit even more annoying.

Re:

[tehcyder]

If you'd ever tried, you'd know that there is apparently a secret test you have to pass before slashdot allows you to post a story, and because it's a secret they won't tell you what it is.

One-line summary.

[CriminalNerd]

Here, I'll summarize it for you:

"Cybercriminals" use: Underground Forums, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, Instant Messaging (IM), and Social Networks. And they use Russian versions of Paypal for payments.

That's the whole of the article. In the next column, she's going to talk about what goods cybercriminals trade for money.

The IRC channel is analogous to an exclusive party where matches as well as transactions all occur within a specific IRC channel.
She could've just called it a private chatroom and skip writing the entire paragraph.

Re:

[doomy]

She must have got the whole IRC idea from Numb3rs' description of IRC [youtube.com].

Re:

[Rizimar]

Oh god, that was painful.

Re:

[naich]

You forgot: "Fucking great advert splatted in the middle of the screen, on top of the text." No idea what it was for. As soon as I see one of those I close the tab.

Re:

[v1]

why don't the popup blockers stop that crap anyway?

Re:

[kimvette]

They dont stop that crap anyway because it is in the same browser window, just on a different layer.

Re:

[gearsmithy]

"Fucking IRC, how does that work?"

Cybercriminals?

[Skorpfox]

What is this IRC you speak of? Real criminals use Morse Code.

Re:

[SimonTS]

Morse Code? What kind of cyber-criminal pussy are you. Go back to your Mom's house and continue pwning your own box.

Us real cyber-criminals use semaphore - and that's for transferring the data bit-by-bit as well as just talking to eech other.

Re:

[zaxus]

Semaphore? What kind of weak sauce namby-pamby bullshit is that?

Us real cyber-criminals use smoke signals, n00b.

Re:

[SimonTS]

Well, we only use semaphore when we need to transmit something really urgent. The rest of the time we wait for the next ice-age and carve our messages into the landscape by diverting the flow where we need it.

Besides that - real criminals don't smoke, that's just in the movies.

Re:

[sabt-pestnu]

Yeah, yeah. Land formation message passing has a great bit-rate, but it is highly granular, and is subject to extreme latency. But hey, it also supports millennial delivery retry attempts.

And who is surprised?

[PerformanceDude]

Most cyber-crime these days is perpetrated by paid professionals and in some cases backed by very wealthy crime syndicates and even protected by corrupt government officials (I'm not going to name anyone here, but since this is mostly Russian/former east block in origin, I'm sure the average Slashdotter can figure it out). The idea of the lone hacker sitting in his bedroom doing evil is just stupid. Phishing, ID scams, ATM skimmer production etc., are all well funded and highly professional activities. So who is surprised that they trade online? When was the last time you heard about any major conviction in a Russian jurisdiction? To them it is just business, so of course they transact on the internet too...

Re:

[Nemyst]

You'd be surprised by how many lone hackers there are still, mostly dumb teenagers. They might not be dangerous to large sites independently, but they can quite effectively disrupt normal activity for smaller sites. Furthermore, many joining together can be problematic. Ever heard of Anonymous?

I know various sites and servers which have been the target of those lone hackers. They have access to a moderately-sized botnet and have absolutely nothing to fear, being small fish to the authorities. I'd much rathe

Re:

[interkin3tic]

When was the last time you heard about any major conviction in a Russian jurisdiction?

Never. Hmm... I've also never heard of any major convictions in... well, anywhere but the US. Thus I conclude that the rest of the world is the cybercrime capitol of the world.

-1, Reinforcing regional stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cybercrime's underground activity, much like a Middle Eastern bazaar, is a loud and boisterous market. Buying, selling, haggling and cheating all take place in these marketplaces". ...and Wall Street. But why pass up an opportunity to criticise people in the Middle East when Westerns are so darn quiet and honest?

Pity you posted that anonymously.

[Travoltus]

The parent post is severely under-rated. Someone please mod it up.

I mean, really, the "Middle Eastern Bazaar" analogy was quite hypocritical considering America is the PRIMARY breeding ground for this crap. China, Russia and the Middle East have a long way to go to catch up to America.

Middle Eastern?

[Chicken_Kickers]

Well, I'm offended by this. I am from South East Asia and I resent the author for implying that the markets in my geographical area is not as loud and boisterous. So are these hackers wearing fez and smoking shisha. Do they have towels wrapped around their heads and greet everyone with Salamalaikum? Seriously, this article reads like it is written for 70-80 year old retirees on AOL.

Re:

[ciderbrew]

*unwraps towel from a fez and looks at feet. sorry.

Re:Middle Eastern?

[h4rm0ny]

I always put a Fez on and smoke a shisha whilst I crack a big corporation's mail server. It just puts me in the right mood somehow.

Re:

[interkin3tic]

I find it takes me back to those shriners-funded criminal computer classes I took in juvee hall. That and my comically small car.

Re:

[interkin3tic]

Do they have towels wrapped around their heads and greet everyone with Salamalaikum?

Yes, but the towels really just hide the greasy hair and tinfoil hats. And "Salamalaikum" happens to be the password to a major cybercrime organization. Come to think of it, it has lead to many avoidable confusions... maybe we should change it...

TFA didn't address step 2: ???

[witherstaff]

Here I was hoping /. would give pointers for any of us wanting to pick up a little extra cash. Unfortunately it wasn't even a good read, I was hoping for at least something like The Cathedral of Criminals and the Bazaar.

However

[Nominei]

Unlike a Middle Eastern bazaar, you can't get fresh fruits and knock-off rolex watches...

Re:

[mastershake82]

Well, you can... but first you have to go to the forum that will show you how to IRC which will lead to an IM where a deal will be made to get you some illegal stuff using Russian PayPal. Then you can take your illegal stuff back to the forum and someone will help you turn that into fruit and Rolex watches!

I'm glad I found this article, I didn't know it was so easy.

Woah

[Haedrian]

Apparently Cyber-criminals communicate like the rest of us normal people.

That was very amazing. I never realised. This article was as filled with as much insight as this post was filled with sarcasm.