Slashdot Mirror
Insurance For Cybercriminals, or Giant Sting?
tsu doh nimh writes "Brian Krebs follows up on a recent Slashdot discussion about a cybercrime gang that is recruiting botmasters to help with concerted heists against U.S. financial institutions. The story looks at the underground's skeptical response to this campaign, which is being led by a criminal hacker named vorVzakone ('thief in law'), who has released a series of videos about himself. vorVzakone also is offering a service called 'insurance from criminal prosecution,' in which miscreants can purchase protection from goons who specialize in bribing or intimidating Russian/Eastern European police into scuttling cybercrime investigations. For $100,000, the service also claims to have people willing to go to jail in place of the insured. Many in the criminal underground view the entire scheme as an elaborate police sting operation."
To whom does that license plate belong to?
Would not be the first time. Even the public self exposure could be amply explained by stupidity. Let us hope law-enforcement is a bit less incompetent for this guy than they usually are with regards to all things Internet.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Aw, how cute, they're forming a business services community! What's next, conferences?
I see a lot of scams in what I do now and I can tell you that this is one of them.
First of all, I am highly dubious that this is in fact an elaborate police sting. If it were, all they'd get is the moronic bottom feeding small fish. Not worth the time and money in court costs to prosecute. Cops go after big fish to take out the spider controlling the web or some high profile crook to put the fear of god into other crooks.(See IRS [USA] strategy)
Is this for real? I don't think so because we wouldn't be seeing this on Slashdot. IF it were real, it would only be available to l33t cybercrooks.
So what's this about?
1. Some narcissist wanting some sort of attention or wanting to cause a stir..
2. Some scammer of scammers wanting to scam stupid people. In other words, someone dishing up some karma to fellow assholes.
Post when an actual bank gets hacked.
Long back I heard that in India there are people offering insurance against getting caught by ticket checker. The insured person pays money in advance and travels without ticket, and when caught pays fine and the amount is reimbursed.
hilarious
Better Call Saul!
Methinks the law enforcement agencies which investigate cybercrime have realized that they are incapable of hiring qualified computer experts who can find the culprits of such crimes, so they decided to get back to the basics. Instead of trying to catch them in cyberspace, where they excel at their trade, they decided to bring the criminals into the police domain, setting up a sting.
I am interested to see if it actually works.
sudo make me a sandwich
This isn't a sting operation. Law enforcement would not be that obvious; They prefer to infiltrate, get close to the people at the top, gather intelligence, and then orchestrate mass-busts shortly after extracting their operatives. The whole point of undercover work is to not get noticed in the wrong way -- making stupid and risky suggestions for criminal enterprise could get them hurt or killed before they gathered the intelligence they were sent in to acquire.
No, fortunately for us, this is most likely stupidity on a grand and delusional scale. The person behind this is most likely in his 20s, single, male, above-average intelligence, spend his childhood poor, regular access to computers and public education, an interest in engineering/programming, and has some idea about "getting it all back" either for himself or his family. He may have started out with smaller crimes -- credit card theft, fraud, etc. He probably has a juvenile record from learning the ropes, and that record brought him into contact with more experienced adults. He smartened up and graduated to computer crime.
There, he honed his programming and engineering skills somewhat (self-taught), and channeled his anger over perceived societal injustice from his teenage years into scams and computer fraud; "They hurt me, I hurt them back ten times worse!" Given his poor track record with crime before, and his sudden 'success' at it now, he quickly developed an exaggerated sense of his abilities and like many young males, now considers himself 'invulnerable'. This latest example simply underscores the extent of his delusional thinking -- and others who are more cautious and experienced don't see that, instead misattributing it to "the police", due to healthy levels of paranoia that permeate the criminal underground.
Anyway, these types of criminals usually self-destruct within a few years of reaching this critical mass of delusional thinking. If he's "lucky" (I use the word lightly; Obviously, it would be better if he were caught and got help) and isn't caught, he'll take the rejection from his criminal peers as further evidence that the world hates him, and become further isolated as he continues what has now in his mind become a one man crusade against the evil empire. The core attributes of this person is a sense of persecution, intelligence, creativity, and he may be schizo-affective, the key trait here being blunted affect (his emotions seem subdued externally, but may have a very rich internal fantasy world to compensate).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This is genius. Its like people paying for insurance where you don't actually have to help them when they get caught. What are they going to do, tell the cops that some mysterious guy on the internet is supposed to take the blame for the crime you just did? He is just trying to get money from criminals who know no better.
"To whom does the license plate belong?" (more correct) or "Who does that license plate belong to?" (less correct)
Two 'to's is one to too many.
Your second example is incorrect -- since "who" is the indirect object of the preposition "to", even if that "to" comes at the end of the sentence, it would again have to be "whom" to be correct:
"Whom does that license plate belong to?"
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Are these the same guys that sold me that darn bridge in new york?
That just sounds like the next logical step of American capitalism, really. Of course, under some peoples' dreams not only would the wealthy be able to pay someone to go to jail for them, but they would get to pick exactly who that person would be - whether that person wants to go or not.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
no really nice try though its like obama wanting to hire hackers and ....so few bit on it....
its same reason this won't fly and its funny as hell but ill say this
if you want to stop bullshit in your nation do something a hacker wants for your nation LIKE END COPYRIGHTS .....show them YOU care instead of trying to rip off everyone in your nation and pander to the elites....
like lowering patents and tuition costs and
canada govt is whining about foreign hackers well i have 1000 in canada and we aren't doing a damn thing till the govt does something for my nation rather then bend over to foreigners....like the usa....
We won't be part of any policing action ever.....we aint here to catch brothers and sisters doing and learning.
being a guardian of your world rather then one that seeks to harm it.
In the first stage this would mean the insurer needs to collect information on criminals that make a living by creating phishing sites or collecting information to lure visitors into paying money or simply steal it. Who would insure people without critical information on who or what he does or has done? One may reason that with attitudes that are common in Russia or within organized crime in general. Afaik the only connections between a criminal and the crime is the victim, evidence, witnesses or the criminal itself. In cybercrime most factors are controlled by the criminal, which only leaves the loss and some data behind as evidence. So I doubt this is a good offer to people that usually try to outsmart their victims and law enforcement. OTOH it would be a perfect source for law enforcement - or the data is simply useless and anyone can claim anything.
In the second stage (if it was a sting operation that is likely to fail) that would mean the only way to find cybercriminals is to follow the stream of money, which is mostly a privacy question. So wether this is preparation of an attempt to lift confidentiality in banking or simply useless.
Anyway, it probably has not much to do with mental problems, it is something in between trying to establish a known structure in a chaotic environment (system within a system) or just a trick. Given a long term exposure to a certain environment can mean to drift away from how things usually are handled, wether it is the insurer or the assured or both.
...Sounds like bank officials.
They don't give a crap about you and those hacking for idealogical stance or for fun. They care about those that participate in large scale finanical or identity theft, or those creating large botnets. Do you think changing copyright law is going to have any impact on hackers participating in the old fashion kind of theft... where they take actual money?
VorVzakone, it's ok to cry.
I thought the whole point of this sub-thread was pedantry? :) If so, linguistic conservativism is more the rule than vernacular use.
As a simple rule of thumb for who / whom, consider he / him or they / them. This may sound a bit tortured in question syntax such as in the corrected example in my previous post, but it still provides a useful and quick-and-easy guide to when to put the "m" on the end of "whom".
Pedantry aside, yes, in the daily vernacular, many (most?) Americans that I've spoken with don't consistently use "whom" correctly, suggesting that this usage is indeed deprecated and on the way out. I have no idea if this is a pondian phenomenon, where perhaps UK or Australian or NZ English speakers might use "whom" more often; I am likewise ignorant of the frequency of usage by Canadian or Indian speakers of English. Such a difference, if present, might indicate laxer grammar education in the US.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
...But no, there is no grammar police that will whack you in the knee caps with a baseball bat if you use a word wrong.
... Unless you go to Catholic school, in which case the nuns may well whack you in the knuckles with a ruler if you use a word wrong^Wincorrectly.
:-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Why Yes
But the best way to avoid a cyberheist is to not have your computer systems infected in the first place. The trouble is, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell when a system is or is not infected. That's why I advocate the use of a Live CD approach for online banking." link
...
Or don't use Microsoft Windows
AccountKiller