Cybercrime Is a Franchise Model That Scales

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."

Comments

Re:Is pay really the reason?

[mi]

Oh really? Even if I actually travel to Africa and personally hand out hot soup in the cities?

Yes, even then. By feeding their populace, you'll be freeing the warlords from having to concern themselves with, you know, governing the country. From providing the food, to education, to building and maintaining roads, all the way up to the monetary policy... You are likely one of the voices in the chorus condemning Bush for spending too much on Iraq "instead of helping social programs". Now imagine, if some uber-rich third party was helping our social programs, leaving Bush able to spend even more on "his wars"...

And then, of course, it would also be exceptionally stupid (and — without proper immunization — reckless) of you to spend your own time doing it, instead of hiring a local (for a minuscule fraction of your wage).

That said, you have shown enough stupidity in this thread to make me think, we'd all be better off (on balance), if you tried...