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Wanted: Hackers For Large-Scale Attacks On American Banks
Trailrunner7 writes "RSA's FraudAction research team has been monitoring underground chatter and has put together various clues to deduce that a cybercrime gang is actively recruiting up to 100 botmasters to participate in a complicated man-in-the-middle hijacking scam using a variant of the proprietary Gozi Trojan. This is the first time a private cybercrime organization has recruited outsiders to participate in a financially motivated attack, said Mor Ahuvia, cybercrime communications specialist for RSA FraudAction. The attackers are promising their recruits a cut of the profits, and are requiring an initial investment in hardware and training in how to deploy the Gozi Prinimalka Trojan, Ahuvia added. Also, the gang will only share executable files with their partners, and will not give up the Trojan's compilers, keeping the recruits dependent on the gang for updates."
The attackers are promising their recruits a cut of the profits, and are requiring an initial investment in hardware and training
as any confidence man could tell you, the best marks are those that think they are in on the scam...
Won't give up their "compilers" now will they.. Bastards, I'll drop in my version of GCC and show them! Er, ahem, I think the article means "source code." And even with that a determined reverse-engineering effort could negate that too..
Can I apply right now?
Why bother recruiting people if you can just hire bots, or herd your own? Why go for 100 small ones if just a few bigger ones will yield you the same number of victims?
These seem like either very inexperienced criminals, or indeed, as someone else suggested, scammers that want to rip off botnet herders, not banks. You don't involve people in your gang if you don't absolutely need them. You don't train them, unless you absolutely need them to know things. The less people know as little as possible, the smaller the chance you will get caught. Causing a racket by recruiting up to 100 herders does not fit that MO.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm trying to remember, who are the bad guys here, the law-breaking, savings-stealing douchebags, or the guys running the botnet?
They should be hacking banks using OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE and tools. (Strokes beard thoughtfully.) The use of proprietary, closed-source tools takes away from the common, computer using felon the ability to maintain his own malicious code.
~ Richard Stallman
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#DeleteChrome
these guys must be morons if they think that they can keep 100 people quiet about anything
Timothy Olyphant's character worked that out with his scheme in Die Hard 4.
1) Hire 100 hackers
2) use their code to crack every bank and utility at once
3) kill the hackers.
4) profit!
Killing all his staff did leave him vulnerable to being tracked by Kevin Smith and taken down by a plucky former LAPD cop though.
It does sound like a hollywood plot. You wouldn't want 100 people giving away the secrets, and it's not necessary when hackers use computers.
There's two sets of crooks involved here, one set are crooks trying to steal stuff, other set are crooks trying to get budget for security theatre. My guess is that this comes from the latter rather than the former.
1. Start "recruiting" people for the diversion A, to keep the RSA's FraudAction research team, the media and (therefore) the government busy with that.
2. Don't tell anyone about the real plan B.
3. Select the best people from the group working on A, and bring them in on plan B.
4. for the profit part: Do plan B before diversion A
5. for the fun part: don't cancel diversion A, just watch it live on the news.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bullshit: if this were really happening, this guy would not be aware of it.
Also, the gang will only share executable files with their partners, and will not give up the Trojan's compilers, keeping the recruits dependent on the gang for updates
It's a trap! Who's that fucking stupid?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't arrest them for the crime you incite them to commit, it just allows you to identify and tag them. Then you monitor them for other illegal activities. That's what you arrest them for. (And by monitoring their communication, you can pick up other criminals that weren't attracted by the initial incitement. Allowing you to conduct coordinated international raids that take out entire networks. Also, you can find the few very best coders and recruit them. Possibly to work against their own government.)
And if you really did unreasonably "incite" some of them, they won't commit other crimes, so they get away with it.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
on the banking system with the Iranians being blamed for it...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.