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Attacking Criminal Networks On the Internet
Hugh Pickens writes "Computer Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are developing techniques to analyze and disrupt black markets on the internet, where criminals sell viruses, stolen data, and attack services estimated to total more than $37 million for the seven-month period they studied. To stem the flow of stolen credit cards and identity data, researchers have proposed two technical approaches to reducing the number of successful market transactions. One approach to disrupting the network is a slander attack where an attacker eliminates the verified status of a buyer or seller through false defamation. Another approach undercuts the cyber-crooks' network by creating a deceptive sales environment. 'Just like you need to verify that individuals are honest on E-bay, online criminals need to verify that they are dealing with "honest" criminals,' says Jason Franklin, one of the researchers."
I think House of Representives is a much larger criminal organization.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Help mcgruff by spreading lies and rumors in an attempt to get the criminals mad at each other? It's like spreading a rumor in prison that some inmate is an undercover cop.
I wonder if anyone is going to get killed over the rumors spread by this anti e-crime technique?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So it looks like their plan is to infiltrate the sites used by these people, and discredit them? The only way to be able to discredit them is to get in contact with them somehow or visit a site they visit regularly. If we can find such a site...why don't we just find out whose using it and arrest them? Is this some new take on crime, that instead of arresting criminals we should discredit them? What's the plan?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
All of the devised methods listed in the article are probably not legal. Whichever organization employs such methods will be exposing itself to lawsuits. Sounds like these "computer scientists" need to add a good attorney to their team, just to make sure it's the hackers and not them who ends up with a legal headache.
Drug interdiction efforts in this country have been law enforcement based - interdict, arrest, trial, imprisonment. Intelligence is limited to that which can be used in court for trial - all else is forbidden.
The techniques referenced in the article are more in the style of warfare, where the objective isn't to arrest a lawbreaker, but defeat an enemy. Different rules apply. For instance, if an anonymous source gives you the key for Botnet A, you don't have to worry about gathering more evidence to be able to convict - just shut the sucker down, or poison it to turn on it's creators, etc.
The confusion between law enforcement and warfare is going to get worse and uglier as time goes on. And I'm not advocating using military thinking domestically on drug trafficking in the US - it doesn't work real well in foreign countries, and I think most drug laws themselves are misguided. But on botnets and international computer crimes? Oh yeah - it's definitely war.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You guys have both missed the real criminals ....
http://www.gop.org/
http://www.democrats.org/
of which the other two organizations you mention are wholly owned subsidiaries of these two, as is the other legislative and judicial branch are, along with most of the smaller regional syndicates.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
They're probably trying to retrain the spam filters, in preparation for their next volley...
Most criminals are only honest within their peer group. Probably because their peer group would likely kill them if they were not honest.
The idea of an honest criminal only applies to victimless crimes such as drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. (To people that insist that self crime is not victimless crimes: stop touching yourself)
marines.com is actually a Marine Corps recruiting site. But since it's in .com, not .mil.us where it belongs or at least .mil or .gov, it's obviously a commercial organization.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks