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Cybercrime Is a Franchise Model That Scales

Posted by kdawson on from the maybe-it-pays-after-all dept.

Presto Vivace notes a report from the RSA conference on the cybercrime economy, and it's not an optimistic one. Part of the problem is that in many places cybercrime pays much better than legitimate work, including security research. "As the panelists explained, a single spam message might be tied to as many as 10 separate organizations and perhaps five suppliers. Every task in the criminal economy has become a separate specialty. Some people sell e-mail lists, others sell lists of compromised IP addresses, there are sellers of credit card numbers, and those who sell access to bot nets. Then there are those who handle product fulfillment for spammers, and those who specialize in laundering money."

6 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Office Space clearly had an impact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of the big problems the guys in Office Space faced was how to launder their money. They were computer programmers who had no knowledge of the intricacies of money laundering. It's good to see someone recognized the problem and is now providing solutions for those of us who don't know how to launder money ourselves.

    1. Re:Office Space clearly had an impact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      So what you're saying is that it's easy, except for the hard part.

  2. And my mother always said that by name*censored* · · Score: 4, Funny

    Crime doesn't pay. Pfft.

    BRB, watching to see if the kettle boils.

    --
    Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
  3. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I clicked the link for the article and all I got was a giant full screen xerox advertisement. I guess there is supposed to be an article of some kind?

  4. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Chapter 1 I believe quotes P.T. Barnum who said it best... "Get that goddamned elephant out of my living room!"

  5. Re:Cut of the source by ratboy666 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The solution? CutePuppies.exe is not executable. End of discussion.

    If you want to actually execute it, you have to:

    1 - save it to disk
    2 - change its permissions
    3 - then (and only then) execute it.

    It is preferable to force a command line session (terminal window) for step 2, with a "difficult" sequence. Say.. chmod +x CutePuppies.exe. And it should show up on the desktop either...

    No "is this allowed?" dialog. No "please enter your password" dialog. Just.. don't.. execute.. it.

    I would even go so far as to force a manual base64 or uu decode in there.

    Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

    --
    Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061