US Cyber Criminal Underground a Shopping Free-For-All (csoonline.com)

itwbennett writes: According to a new report by Trend Micro, the North American cyber criminal underground has "[essentially] become a gun show for everyone as long as they can participate and are willing to pay," said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro. Their research revealed that 15% of underground sites sell offer crimeware and allow criminals to buy a variety of malware and hacking services, such as crypting. It's the hottest-selling item, other than drugs, said Kellermann. In case you're wondering, murder for hire sites make up just 1% of the underground mall.

Comments

So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> has become a gun show

So...only "small arm", non-automated hacks are for sale then?

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[zlives]

for that you have to go to the big players like the US and Chinese govt's per norm.

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[ageoffri]

And you have to go through a background check run either by the FBI or your Steve level BI.

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[wyHunter]

You beat me to saying it!

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[Anonymous Coward]

a variety of malware and hacking services, such as crypting. It's the hottest-selling item, other than drugs

What the fuck is "crypting", and if it's not the hottest selling then stop calling it that. And why are they even mentioning guns at all when this has nothing to do with them.

Re: So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper term is semi automatic hacks. In the state of New York you are limited to 10 hacks per tcp connection before you have to disconnect and reconnect.

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because omg guns! The media is whipped into a frenzy about them right now despite the fact that more gun control would not have stopped the terror attacks in france and california.

Re: So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another fine example of how no hate burns as hot as Liberal hate.

Re: So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[KGIII]

Do you have to re-crimp new CAT-6 every time in California or is there a special tool that locks the cable in and you have to press a recessed button in order to remove the cable before you can reinsert a new one?

Re:So only certain types of hacks are sold?

[ebvwfbw]

More like a church bizarre.

Law Enforcement?

[Locke2005]

Doesn't making it easy for cybercriminals to find your business also make it easy for law enforcement to find your business? Why isn't law enforcement spending money to try to contact each of these, as well as put up multiple honeypot sites to go after their customer base? How many of the murder-for-hire sites were created by law enforcement in the first place? Much like beautiful women on dating sites, I suspect the count of criminal enterprises is greatly exagerated by ringers put up by law enforcement personnel.

Re:Law Enforcement?

[fluffernutter]

You think these people go through all the trouble of figuring out the darknet to place an ad, and then come waltzing up the sidewalk of anyone who contacts them? Interesting.

Re:Law Enforcement?

[ShanghaiBill]

Doesn't making it easy for cybercriminals to find your business also make it easy for law enforcement to find your business?

Not if you pay with Bitcoin and download with Tor. Do you really think they pay with a Visa card, and have FedEx deliver a CDROM to the billing address?

Re:Law Enforcement?

[Fire_Wraith]

Only if you want it to come with the special FBI Party Van add-on package.

Re:Law Enforcement?

[rtb61]

Still basically it is nothing but script kiddies for profit. The coders and distributors try to make as much money as possible out of idiot amateurs and it is the idiots who get caught and provide cover for the coders and distributors activities. Nothing new just another investigatory frothing beat up for, we need more money and power now. One second the biggest culprits are other governments, then it is terrorists and then it is back to organised crime. Personally I am waiting for the alien hackers threat, you know, you just know, it will eventually happen as all the other threats lose their budget pumping hype.

Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[swb]

About the only time I ever hear about contract killings is when people get arrested trying to hire somebody to commit murder on their behalf. It never works, they always seem to get caught. As they say, good help is hard to find.

Have there been any actual killings attributed to a murder for hire website? It sounds like a scam.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[wyHunter]

It probably is a scam, or at least, an urban legend. Here's the scenario: LE puts up such a website and gets some bozo to inquire. They arrest bozo.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[PPH]

I don't know. I spent the last 4 years looking for my ex-wife's killer. Nobody would take the job.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[ShanghaiBill]

About the only time I ever hear about contract killings is when people get arrested trying to hire somebody to commit murder on their behalf. It never works, they always seem to get caught.

If "it works" then you don't hear about it. There is just a dead body, and nobody knows who killed them or why. Often, there isn't even a body. There are thousands of unsolved murders every year, and many more people that go missing.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[mccrew]

Alternatively, they get bozo to pony up a large payment, then disappear... Profit!

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[swb]

There are thousands of unsolved murders every year, and many more people that go missing.

I hear that "thousands of unsolved murders" but how many are there really? I believe there are a fair amount of murders that go unsolved, but aren't most of these like gang killings or something? The kind of deal where some guy is found shot dead in a shitty part of town -- the cops don't know who the trigger is, but through gang intelligence they have a pretty decent idea what group killed him and often a fair guess (they can't prove in court) who the trigger probably was.

Actual disappearances that are non-gang related make big news, especially kids (who wouldn't seem likely to be contract killing targets). Very rarely do non-criminals established people in a community "just disappear" and its a total mystery where they went. Maybe drifters, runaways, prostitutes, but I'm guessing anyone that wants those people dead is a serial killer or hasn't the wherewithal to pay someone in Btc for their murder.

And when basic upstanding people do get killed or just disappear, it takes the cops like 3 seconds to figure out that Mr. Mustard killed Mrs. Plum in the Library with a Candlestick over the inheritance or some other obvious dispute.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[rockmuelle]

Not sure about in the US, but back when I was in Thailand in the early 90s, I remember a Bangkok Post feature article that interviewed a number of "hit men". It seemed fairly legit, even if the stories were embellished. Most of it was centered around the regional drug trade. Of every newspaper article I've read, that's one I wish I'd kept. It was one part John Woo, one part local news investigative reporting.

Here's a recent article about one being captured: http://www.bangkokpost.com/pri...

Of course, I doubt any of them used a web site to drum up business...

-Chris

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[edtice1559]

I wish I had mod points. Most people wouldn't know where to look for a contract killer and, unless the first person they ask happens to be one, there is a string of evidence starting at the first inquiry. If somebody from my community asked if I knew a hit man, I'd have to politely decline any knowledge. I would probably assume that they were just venting some anger and ignore it. But if a week later, some bizarre murder happened in town, I would probably remember pretty quick. So would the other dozens of people they'd have to ask before they found somebody, if they found somebody. Likely somebody may squeal even before the find somebody to hire.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure I could find a contract killer, but not actually being associated with people like that, I might get killed by them if I tried to hire them. Probably after they took my money.

Re:Any proof murder for hire is a real thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple logic: professionalism in affairs that include major amount of trust cannot exist without reputation. OTOH, reputation in illegal killing business leads to a swift end, for executor, as well as for any proxy, lead or contact. Therefore, after "the contract" is done, and money transferred, it is best interest of murderer to kill the client too, and vice versa it is best interest of client to kill murderer. Essentially, only people who could sustain carrier assassins are those who are beyond law anyway - people in power, and "in power" means they can kill you or destroy you otherwise anyway, so they are able to coerce their subordinates into murder, and dispose of them if need be (by coercing some other subordinate). Anyway, with so many problems, murders for hire could exist only as some sort of public civil service, and then it would be under scrutiny of the public and under rule of law ... Oh wait!

How Will I Ever Protect Myself?

[Anonymous Coward]

How will I ever protect myself from these cyber villains? Do you think that Trend Micro could help me?

Re:How Will I Ever Protect Myself?

[houstonbofh]

I am sure the report was totally unbiased...

I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

This is as much a part of the 'if they can't enforce laws against you then screw them' economy as Uber and Lyft are.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out Google, Boeing, IBM, probably more I can't think of at the moment.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[DarkOx]

Well the moral of the story here is you should not pass laws you can't enforce you should not outlaw things people generally don't see as terribly objectionable.

Letting people use apps t get rides and paying people to take them places in cars does not offend anyone other than rent seeking cabbies. The result is you get a general public that breaks the law. Ditto for soft drugs like weed, gambling, more discrete prostitution eg call girls who do happy endings, etc.

Other people see people they know and respect being scoff laws and respect for the law is lost. After that its only short mental leap to 'i probably won't get caught so what the hell' and that is why we can't have nice things.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

This is as much a part of the 'if they can't enforce laws against you then screw them' economy as Uber and Lyft are.

Which is why we shouldn't be passing unenforceable laws in the first place. If we didn't have the taxi monopolies and the laws supporting them, Uber and Lyft wouldn't be such a big deal because we would already have large numbers of small companies. But by passing first the monopolistic taxi laws and then passing more laws to try and regulate Uber and Lyft, you're pretty much ensuring that only big companies with deep pockets and lots of lawyers can remain in the market.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Grishnakh]

Uber and Lyft are perfectly legal. Your mistake is thinking that taxi laws apply to them; they don't. They don't have taximeters, and therefore are not taxis. They're limosines, and operate under those laws.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[houstonbofh]

There is something to be said for some regulation, however. This is from having seen the unregulated "Black Taxis" of South Africa...

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Anonymous Coward]

discrete prostitution

I like my prostitution continuous, you insensitive clod!

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Volda]

I wouldn't say they are perfectly legal. I do not think that most of those working for Uber or Lyft have commercial insurance to be transporting people for profit and do not follow DOT guidelines for safety and drug testing. That's part of why they are getting in trouble.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

It offends me. It offends me because I live in a city where I know I can go to the nearest hotel if I need a cab, something I will not be able to do when they are gone. Where some of the infrastructure is too narrow, and there is enough traffic as it is. Where I know that my disabled relatives can also get cabs only because the companies are legislated to have a certain number of handicapped equipped cars. When people vote with their wallets, they make very selfish choices. This is why there are laws. I have no way to vote, but you know, thanks for asking how I felt about it.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Locke2005]

"When people vote with their wallets, they make very selfish choices."

So in other words, you're against personal choices and in favor of government forcing you to subsidize special interests against your will? Doesn't sound like "freedom" to me.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

It's still freedom because the government only prevents you from hurting others in ways that may be lost on the individual. I'm willing to pay an overhead if it means more people get what they need, yes.

It happens all over.. prescription meds, buildings, power grids, city planning, etc etc Nothing new. It's called civilized society.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[BlueStrat]

It offends me. It offends me because I live in a city where I know I can go to the nearest hotel if I need a cab, something I will not be able to do when they are gone.

First, only the largest major hotels in the largest US cities have cabs waiting and/or continuously picking up & dropping fares. You'd have to hope the clerk doesn't tell you to leave the property if you simply walked in and asked them to call a cab for you as a non-guest, in most places.

Second, why would you assume all the existing taxi companies would disappear? Having to actually compete, some will surely fail, but it's not a given that would be equally true for every taxi company. The ones that offer quick-responding, clean, honest, pleasant, and competitively-priced services can survive.

Where I know that my disabled relatives can also get cabs only because the companies are legislated to have a certain number of handicapped equipped cars.

Usually transportation for disabled/special needs/seniors is provided at no cost in most places in the US by city/township/county municipal governments, even in smaller towns. Here in a city of ~35K there are municipal special needs/disabled/senior transportation vehicles available by telephone at no cost that cover the entire county.

I don't ever recall seeing any kind of special accommodation vehicles operated by either of the two major-name taxi companies in town. Having had to ride in those cabs on a few occasions over the years, it would seem cruel to subject a disabled person to similarly-maintained & operated special needs vehicles.

Given all that, can't another business exist that isn't intended nor suited to be a special needs transportation specialty service? Are we next to prosecute shoe stores for selling shoes which offend and don't accommodate the legless?

If the goal is actually to provide transportation options for disabled/senior/handicapped, I think that's already seen massive improvement in recent years, and in many if not the majority of cases taxi companies have had no or little involvement. I believe the existence of other private at-will services has no real impact on this area and that this is FUD from the taxi industry.

Strat

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

"Second, why would you assume all the existing taxi companies would disappear?"
Because you're allowing a company to ignore the laws that hold their market together. No enforcement, no laws. No laws, no market. No market, no taxis. that much is pretty clear, actually

Why should people of limited mobility only have 'special' services to use? A lot of government agencies only support the vary disabled. There is a whole group in the spectrum in between that should not be taking resources from the ones at the deepest end of the spectrum. It will only raise costs for them and the government, and it will raise my local taxes a great deal more than I will ever pay for a taxi. There is nothing wrong with the able bodied users of the service chipping in a bit as well so that the less able bodied can use it. At any rate it is all beside the point, because this is how my locality has decided that the transportation system will work. Now if it is going to be changed, I don't trust the market to 'correct' itself naturally. Not when people are out there only doing things for profit.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

There is something to be said for some regulation, however. This is from having seen the unregulated "Black Taxis" of South Africa...

Those aren't really "taxis" but minibuses, like you find in many third world nations. And the problem isn't with lack of regulation, it's with lack of enforcement of criminal law (or alternative private mechanisms).

It's also hard to say whether the current situation is worse than the original situation. After all, large numbers of people are transported by the current system, and relatively cheaply. A state-granted monopoly would be more orderly and safer, but would likely serve the people much less well.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[epyT-R]

you lefties are a riot. Equating murder for hire with taxi services is the mark of crazy.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[Anonymous Coward]

Letting people use apps t get rides and paying people to take them places in cars does not offend anyone other than rent seeking cabbies.

It's the companies that own the medallions and lease out the cabs on a daily basis to the cabbies who actually make most of the money. The cabbies have to really scramble to get enough money to pay the daily rental fees and still have something left over after expenses for a modest profit. There are a very rare few cabbies, mostly the older ones close or very close to retirement, who actually own their own medallions, but these guys are a dying breed and quite literally in some cases.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[KGIII]

Well the moral of the story here is you should not pass laws you can't enforce you should not outlaw things people generally don't see as terribly objectionable.

Letting people use apps t get rides and paying people to take them places in cars does not offend anyone other than rent seeking cabbies. The result is you get a general public that breaks the law. Ditto for soft drugs like weed, gambling, more discrete prostitution eg call girls who do happy endings, etc.

Other people see people they know and respect being scoff laws and respect for the law is lost. After that its only short mental leap to 'i probably won't get caught so what the hell' and that is why we can't have nice things.

That's insightful? You can't enforce laws against murder - you can only punish after the fact and then only if there's evidence to do so. So we shouldn't have laws that make murder illegal? That's not so insightful, I think.

Laws have never been about stopping anything. They've been about establishing punishment for what is deemed harmful behavior by the powers that made those laws.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

I would think righties wouldn't want to see millions more on welfare. Uber will decimate an entire industry that has been promised to people. Families are depending on this income, and now no one will make significant money driving people in cars again. In the end the entire economy will take another spin downwards. But I guess you righties tend to complain a lot about people who live off the system but as long as you are happy you'll let the industries fail like dominos. The funny thing is you'll probably still go on complaining.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[epyT-R]

Yeah, but it's the left that's been anti uber/lyft. You can bitch about uber's pricing but it's not like taxi service hasn't been a ripoff. Some competition should help settle market prices. Look what lack of competition did to the american car market. There's a reason americans buy foreign, and why detroit is now a hellhole. Competition is a needed element to keep businesses limber. Otherwise, they turn into bloated, inefficient monopolies like any other state service.

Part of the problem of 'living wage' is the unseen inflation caused by deficit spending. This hurts the 20-30k/yr working class much more than your 1% (which includes a lot of liberals btw). The left wing solutions always revolve around increasing minimum wages, welfare services, and taxes, which in turn inflates the currency yet more. If you want to help those people, reduce their tax load and support paying down debt. Eliminate tax loopholes and simplify.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

The taxi service has been charging exactly what they need to charge according to the laws and regulations that were made by the people who live in the cities they operate in. If we yank the carpet out from underneath them now, there will be all kinds of lawsuits and rightfully so. If someone took something the value of my house away from me (ie. the value of a medallion) just because they didn't like my house and how it was built, I'd need to sue as well.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[epyT-R]

Laws and regulation != competition. Therefore what is being charged isn't necessarily represented by what the market will bear. This leads to crazy fares. Of course, that's ok, but when uber does it, it's the end of the world, right? There's nothing special about transportation services that requires 'medallions' and artificial exclusivity.

Re:I'd like to mention..

[fluffernutter]

Uh, Medallians only came about because too many people were on the road trying to be a taxi so I'm not quite sure how you can say there is no purpose to them. There were a lot of accidents and injuries because cars were literally swarming the roads looking for fares and it had to be restricted,

What is "crypting"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it?

Re:What is "crypting"?

[Anonymous Coward]

NM. I found a description.

Re:What is "crypting"?

[DaTrueDave]

But the bad guys didn’t exactly take this innovation laying down; rather, they responded with their own innovations. What they came up with is known as the “crypting” service, a service that has spawned an entire industry that I would argue is one of the most bustling and lucrative in the cybercrime underground today.

Put simply, a crypting service takes a bad guy’s piece of malware and scans it against all of the available antivirus tools on the market today — to see how many of them detect the code as malicious. The service then runs some custom encryption routines to obfuscate the malware so that it hardly resembles the piece of code that was detected as bad by most of the tools out there. And it repeats this scanning and crypting process in an iterative fashion until the malware is found to be completely undetectable by all of the antivirus tools on the market.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag...

word for the day?

[Anonymous Coward]

"crimeware???"

That is my new favourite word. I am going to get on amazon and start searching for some great new crimeware to buy.

Re:word for the day?

[houstonbofh]

Let's do those crimes! Let's get some sushi and not pay!

Nice analogy

[rfengr]

Nice F'ing analogy; a gun show. Has he ever been to a gun show? Most of the tables selling guns are FFL. The rest beef jerky, tools, ammo, etc. Sheesh, you have to be an FFL to be a "dealer". There are no unlicensed "dealers". Sure, there are a few with signs hung on their backs with a long gun on shoulder, advertising a private sale, but they are few.http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/07/203211/us-cyber-criminal-underground-a-shopping-free-for-all#

Re:Nice analogy

[rfengr]

...and I forgot to mention the loads of undercover ATF just waiting to bust someone. A gun show is really no different than a gun store, just more like a flea market.

Re:Nice analogy

[ksheff]

Don't forget the little old ladies selling jelly, salsa, or other stuff they made at home. They're the ones that really rake in the cash.

Re:Nice analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The guys selling t-shirts, hats and gun cases are making the bucks, not the dudes selling guns.

But back to the analogy -- it's a false, agenda driven narrative. Looking at the CSO online, TreandMicro pie slice at 2% of sites, only one notch above murder for hire

Re:Nice analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all have take a liberal to the gun show day. Hell, they might even have a good time even if they cannot bring themselves to admit it.

At least we know

[tsotha]

In case you're wondering, murder for hire sites make up just 1% of the underground mall.

Well, sure. There aren't that many FBI agents.

gun show

[Yonder Way]

That quote is ridiculous. Anybody who's ever been to a gun show can tell you it's one of the safest most orderly mass congregations of people you'll ever have the pleasure of attending. The stuff that's for sale adheres to strict local, state, and federal laws. And there is no tolerance by the show management, attendees, or other vendors of shenanigans.

Re:gun show

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who's ever been to a gun show can tell you it's one of the safest most orderly mass congregations of people you'll ever have the pleasure of attending. The stuff that's for sale adheres to strict local, state, and federal laws.

I've been to a gun show, long ago. You're right that everything for sale there is legal. I'm not sure it's really as wonderful as you describe. I do recall some d-bags selling stuff like copies of The Turner Diaries and other trashy merchandise.

Re:gun show

[SuperBanana]

That quote is ridiculous. Anybody who's ever been to a gun show can tell you it's one of the safest most orderly mass congregations of people you'll ever have the pleasure of attending. The stuff that's for sale adheres to strict local, state, and federal laws. And there is no tolerance by the show management, attendees, or other vendors of shenanigans.

six people shot in one week at gun shows.

That's just one example. Googling "man shot gun show" yields a veritable treasure-trove of examples of accidental discharges at gun shows.

Kind of an odd definition of "safest most orderly mass congregations of people you'll ever have the pleasure of attending", seeing as how I have never been to an event where anyone was shot, including a 4th of July concert where there were a million people.

Re:gun show

[ebvwfbw]

Ok, problem with the story. Do you know anything about guns? At all? It says he slid the 25 caliber pistol's slide back. Well if he did that, it can't shoot. As soon as the slide moves it disables striking or it will blow up were the cartridge to go off.

BTW, did you know I'm a French Model?
Must be, you read it on the Internet. Bon Jour!

What do they think goes on at gun shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

The authors have no clue about gun shows. Almost every gun show I have visited had a cop at the front door, and I have been to a lot of gun shows.

Since the authors of this story imply that gun shows are places where lots of illegal guns are sold to criminals, I wonder how well they understand criminals. Probably not very well.

It's time to take note of their names and remember to search for them monthly for a few decades. This ridiculous misunderstanding of criminality will be very useful in discrediting them for decades to come.

Re:What do they think goes on at gun shows?

[EdwardFurlong]

Probably the last place, even with what they call the "gun show loophole" you would ever want to make an illegal buy or sale. The slightest whiff you are either a criminal, a narc, or a gov setup, nobody will have anything to do with you, buying or selling. Maybe these people should go to gun shows to sell their drugs, or why not sell guns online if it is so easy to sell drugs? One cow is not the same as another.

Re:What do they think goes on at gun shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as how there hasn't been a "gun show loophole" for quite a few years now, they must not be selling much in the way of illegal software at this "cyber criminal underground".

Re:What do they think goes on at gun shows?

[EdwardFurlong]

I thought the "gun show loophole" was private citizens selling to other private citizens, in most states you can sell a firearm to someone else, of course they want to stop that as well, but something about it being at a gun show makes it a bad thing. If you want to buy from a private party, just go to armslist.com, check the box private party.

Don't even need to go that far...

[Anonymous Coward]

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/john-mcafee-hackers-using-free-155349721.html#rreWpwR

stricter gun laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh,
2 percent, here's the cheap do it yourself kit.
1 percent, hire an expensive professional to do it for you.

It brings up the question: If the US had strict gun laws, how high of a percentage would weapons become?

"become a gun show"

[Anonymous Coward]

what?? That comparison is completely out of line and inappropriate.

captcha: vilified

bitcoin blockchain

[DrYak]

Not if you pay with Bitcoin

Except that, with the bitcoin protocole, every single transation is broadcast to the whole network (on purpose, that's the way it works without a central authority.

And eventually, the guy will want to actually spend them. These bitcoins arent going to sit collecting dust.
Which means either using them to pay for something (and thus sending them to a payment processor) or exchange them (and thus sending them to an online exchange platform).
And these sites (exchage and payment processors) are require by law (laws against money laundering) to collect the data of their members.

So with some data big-analysis it's possible to eventually put a name on the public keys (making the pseudonymity of the network).

Re:bitcoin blockchain

[Anonymous Coward]

It's common to just trade the bitcoins for cash, or pass them through enough tangles of split transactions that they become super hard to trace

Re:bitcoin blockchain

[JesseMcDonald]

Which means either using them to pay for something (and thus sending them to a payment processor)

You can make purchases with Bitcoin without going through any payment processor. Sure, a lot of sites use BitPay or Coinbase or similar, but there are some that accept bitcoins directly. For that matter, not all of the ones that do use a payment processor require any personally-identifying information, particularly for online services or digital goods. (Obviously if you need something shipped to you, that isn't going to be very anonymous.) The payment processor itself doesn't collect any of this information; they just present an order-specific Bitcoin address and ensure that the funds are received and delivered to the merchant, typically with an option for automatic currency exchange. They can identify the merchant, but not the buyer.

Two tickets..

[modi123]

Sweet! Now when I flex my pale muscles to pickup chicks I can ask them if they want two tickets to the _cyber_ gun show!

And again, you fail at the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the GREAT BIG GRAPH from the story we see 2% of traffic is gun-related, but somehow it's a "gun show"? I guess you are one of the gun-hating crowd, amirite? Sheesh.

Wow a free for all?

[burtosis]

If its free for all count me in - i love free stuff!

you can find a citation to prove any argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Googling "man shot gun show" yields a veritable treasure-trove of examples of accidental discharges at gun shows.

Did you know that you can put anything on the internet?
Googling "SuperBanana is part of the rebel alliance and a traitor" gets 1,450 results.

Take him away!

Cyber

[aaaaaaargh!]

Sorry, whenever I see the word "cyber" in an article, I know it's crap and stop reading. Doesn't matter whether it's about cybernetics or the "US cyber underground".

Bitcoin anonymity

[DrYak]

It's common to just trade the bitcoins for cash,

Either you do it on a small scale (as do normal people, and which would be of limited use for a criminal earning a LOT of BTC money).
Or you need to constantly exchange huge wads of cash (so you need to find a neighbourhood with HIGH needs for bitcoins, and trade a LOT of money which is bound to attract the curiosity of law enforcement and/or tax services)

Remember the discussion is not about "how can I anonymously trade my 0.03 BTC ?" the discussion is about criminals whose main source of revenue is in BTC and who need to conver whole salaries' worth of BTC into cash.

or pass them through enough tangles of split transactions that they become super hard to trace

super hard to trace for your aunt ? maybe.
super hard to trace for government with access to tons of computing power and big data analysis ? not so sure.