The Year of 2008 In Cybercrime 47
BobB-nw writes "Underground botnet markets and high-profile spam cases headlined the year in tech crime. One of the most disturbing cybercrime trends in 2008, many security analysts say, has been the emergence of a full-blown underground economy where credit card information, identity theft information, and spam and phishing software are all available for relatively low prices. 2008 also saw major developments in the cases against three major spammers in the United States."
Almost a dupe, but yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone please rustle up a good old Scientology bashing article, please?
Emergence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hasn't there always been an underground crime racket in things like check fraud, ID fraud, ID forging, financial fraud, theft etc. It isn't that this is an emerging market, more than it is where the old market has moved into. In the same way as Wallmart moved from the real to the virtual so are the criminals.
Sure its slightly different in that you don't get mugged and it can be better automated and scaled, but fake or duplicate passports have been around for years as has the ID theft problem. Hell in a world where Illinois can elect 4 out of 8 corrupt governors its hardly surprising that there is a problem with fraud and extortion.
This isn't news about a market that is new, its news about how existing crime organisations are going into new markets, just like the Mafia et al shifting from alcohol and protection into drugs. There has always been a problem with organised crime and there has always been an underground market for illegal information and products (after all these are just different illegal shipments).
This reads a bit like the .com stories of 1999 which said that there was a new magic economy that would replace the old one, then it turned out that mainly it was the boring old economy that worked in the new world. I'd imagine that the same is pretty true for the cybercrime world, same bosses, different henchmen who have more brains than muscles.
Re:Almost a dupe, but yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
A cynical person might begin to wonder if there's some kind of deal between NW and /. in order to drive traffic to NW so they get the ad-impressions. Now where would be find anybody so cynical on this website?
Rather obvious transition (Score:5, Insightful)
New developement? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a 1337 hacker, I'm not a computer expert, and I'm certainly not savvy to the cutting edge of crime but I'm sure this isn't remotely new. Is anyone else reading this and thinking that this was the case at least as far back as 2006?
Re:Almost a dupe, but yet. (Score:3, Insightful)
Editors, please banish anything from this site to Idle -- slashdot's garbage can in other words. Better still, just banish it.
Re:Yeah, cybercrime is nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it does.
No operating system is perfectly secure. Even Linux, with its non-root mentality, has exploits for it. I've got 74 updates waiting for download right now, many of which are security updates. (Let's just say 1/4 for the sake of argument.)
Windows was wiiiide open for years, which is why there are so many exploits for it. We've all read the "Surviving the First Day of Windows XP" guide; we know how open that OS was. That's not to say it's the only shaky OS. It's just the most famous and the most available.
The folks who break into our computers spend and make fortunes on security. I've spent about $100 in the last 10 years securing my computer. The only things that keeps me from getting cracked are my obscurity and my neural network. In other words, I don't have anything valuable or desirable, and I'm not dumb enough to open random attachments.
Any online system is crackable, given enough time and resources. These cybercriminals have more of both than we do.
Thinking for even one second that you're fully secure because you're using Linux makes you part of the problem.
the solution .. (Score:3, Insightful)
The solution is to stop relying on Credit Card numbers for online verification. Using something like a smartcard, for each transaction, use a card-reader to generate a unique one time session-code. The transaction from the card-reader to the server is encrypted by this one-time session code. No CVC2 number, no PIN or card number need be entered or sent over the connection. To verify card present, the card generates a one-time four digit passcode that is syncronized with the server and this is typed in by the user, only then is the transaction completed. At worst all a key logger would record, is a defunct four digit code and session key.
Re:Yeah, cybercrime is nice, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Basically you're just saying that you're as secure as the next guy using Windows XP with sufficient knowledge.
Nothing new there, move along.
The problem is that the majority of people having a computer connected to the Internet lack the skills to secure it no matter what OS they are running.
And before they have learned how to secure it they have already made holes in the default security in order to make, for example, a torrent client work.