Thieves with honor and market etiquettes

 

BANGALORE, INDIA:There is indeed honor among thieves. A recent report found many parts of the cyber black market are well structured, policed and have rules like a constitution. In addition, those who scam others are regularly banned or otherwise pushed off the market.

The vendor finds the cyber black markets have a mature economy with characteristics akin to those of a thriving metropolitan city. A new global report, sponsored by Juniper Networks and conducted by the RAND Corporation, reveals several economic indicators that cyber black markets have reached unprecedented levels of maturity and growth.

While there has been significant research measuring different parts of the hacker black markets, RAND's report, "Markets for Cybercrime Tools and Stolen Data: Hackers' Bazaar," examines for the first time these markets in their entirety and applies economic analysis to better understand how they function. RAND found significant levels of economic sophistication, reliability, accessibility and resilience in the products, distribution channels and actors involved in the black markets.

Juniper Networks likens the hacker black markets to a thriving metropolitan city with diverse communities, industries and interactions. Like other forms of e-commerce, many data records, exploit kits and goods are bought and sold from storefronts -- which can encompass everything from instant messaging chat channels and forums to sophisticated stores. RAND found some organizations can reach 70 to 80,000 people, with a global footprint that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars.

RAND's report suggests the cyber black markets are a mature and growing multi-billion-dollar economy with a robust infrastructure and social organization. 

As to Service Economy - RAND found that not only goods, but criminal services are available for purchase. These tools, sold on the black market as traditional software or leased like any other managed service, can help enable the most unskilled hackers to launch fairly elaborate and advanced attacks. For example, RAND found botnets, which can be used to launch a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, are sold for as low as $50 for a 24-hour attack.

Also, as RAND found,  it takes connections and relationships to move up the (cyber) food chain. Getting to the top requires personal connections and those at the top are making the lion's share of the money.

What was an interesting point again gleaned is that transactions in the cyber black markets are often conducted by means of digital currencies. Bitcoin, Pecunix, AlertPay, PPcoin, Litecoin, Feathercoin, and Bitcoin extensions such as Zerocoin are a few. RAND found many criminal sites are starting to accept only digital crypto currencies due to their anonymity and security characteristics.