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Dark Market: How Hackers became the New Mafia by Misha Glenny
IT READS like a crime thriller. You will have a hard time putting it down.
I have never been able to say that about any book I have reviewed in the 17 years I have been reviewing business books.
The subject is the covert world of cybercrime as a business, and how it affects individuals and business.
Everyone who uses the internet should know of the threats that come with turning on your computer. The first of these threats is cybercrime, the subject of most of Glenny’s book.
The form this type of crime takes is most commonly the theft and cloning of credit card data for financial gain.
The title of the book, Dark Market, was the name of a website dedicated to assisting cybercriminals in “carding”, the term used for this activity.
On the site you could buy skimmers, tiny devices that read the data on a card and allow the criminal to use your card as if they were you, while your card is in your wallet. The only way you know your security has been “compromised” is when you get that call from your bank.
Carders can also trade “dumps” - whole batches of card details complete with PIN numbers and CSVs - through sites such as Dark Market. You can also buy complete new identities, passports and other criminal necessities on the site.
The site offered another important facility. All those trading on the site are crooks, and trusting a crook to sell you anything poses a special challenge.
The site acts as an escrow account where the buyer’s money is held until the seller delivers. It also attempts to filter out undercover law enforcement agents, unreliable traders and competitors.
Dark Market is only one example of such a site; there have been others and no doubt more will appear.
Why are these sites not closed down? Mainly because of the nature of the internet and its configuration.
A site registered beyond the jurisdiction of the local police force could be hiding behind other sites in unregulated countries, while in fact being operated from the small internet café in your neighbourhood.
Or, as in the case of one of the cybercriminals arrested as a key administrator of Dark Market, from your super smart, well-mannered, teenage son’s bedroom.
When American bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robs banks, he is reputed to have said: “Because that is where the money is.”
Why are credit cards the primary targets of cybercriminals? Because that is where the money is.
Credit on a gigantic scale is offered to almost everyone in the form of credit cards without the rigour required of loans in other types of credit. Trillions of dollars move in and out of businesses around the world via those plastic cards.
Physically breaking into a bank is extremely difficult, close to impossible, and comes with a very high probability of being apprehended before you walk out of the door.
There are security doors barring your way, security devices to alert local law enforcement, cameras and other sophisticated deterrents.
The weakest link in the banking system is the customer. Almost all customers are happily unaware of how their banking and credit security can be compromised; they are also protected from the consequences.
If your card was skimmed or your details cloned, “No problem,” says the polite call centre operator who called you to check if you bought five pairs of running shoes, “You won’t be charged.”
The bank does not lose because they are insured, the merchant is paid, and you did not suffer any financial loss.
If you were to bear the cost, you would cancel your cards, if the merchant had to bear the cost, he would not accept cards, and if banks had to bear the cost, they would be losing huge amounts of money.
It's a win-win - or is it?
So where is the problem? The cybercriminals win and no one involved in the crime loses. The fact is that all those who bank lose because insurance companies’ payouts have to be funded by someone, and that someone is you and me through increased bank charges.
The cybercriminals whose activities are covered in the book have been apprehended and their accounts gleaned from reports and interviews with them in prisons. They are not heavy-set thugs, but exceptionally smart young men who have uncommon skills in moving about the internet.
Some have worked on both sides on the crime line, fighting cybercrime and committing cybercrime. (On the internet, you never know whether the people you are interacting with are who they say they are.)
Others graduated from playing computer games with imaginary criminals and law enforcement agents to doing it for real and making huge amounts of money with miniscule outlay.
The same highly talented people can also get viruses onto your computer that “captures’ it, so they can do anything with it from erasing data to sending spam emails to a single site to bring it down.
And all this without the ordinary user being aware of anything amiss.
They can also insert botnets, tiny coded robots, onto your computer that can record every keystroke and send it back to someone interested in your bank details or your about-to-be-patented invention.
Detection of cybercrime is excruciatingly difficult and even when the evidence seems available, getting a conviction is equally tricky because of the recent emergence of this kind of crime.
Tired of getting those silly letters telling you that you have inherited or won millions? So you reply out of curiosity or to annoy the sender, and you have just allowed them into your life and with all its secrets!
Cybercrime is estimated as the largest area of crime in the world today and it can destroy more than your savings and identity.
This is an intriguing and worrying phenomenon. Everyone should be notified.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High ----+ Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
IT READS like a crime thriller. You will have a hard time putting it down.
I have never been able to say that about any book I have reviewed in the 17 years I have been reviewing business books.
The subject is the covert world of cybercrime as a business, and how it affects individuals and business.
Everyone who uses the internet should know of the threats that come with turning on your computer. The first of these threats is cybercrime, the subject of most of Glenny’s book.
The form this type of crime takes is most commonly the theft and cloning of credit card data for financial gain.
The title of the book, Dark Market, was the name of a website dedicated to assisting cybercriminals in “carding”, the term used for this activity.
On the site you could buy skimmers, tiny devices that read the data on a card and allow the criminal to use your card as if they were you, while your card is in your wallet. The only way you know your security has been “compromised” is when you get that call from your bank.
Carders can also trade “dumps” - whole batches of card details complete with PIN numbers and CSVs - through sites such as Dark Market. You can also buy complete new identities, passports and other criminal necessities on the site.
The site offered another important facility. All those trading on the site are crooks, and trusting a crook to sell you anything poses a special challenge.
The site acts as an escrow account where the buyer’s money is held until the seller delivers. It also attempts to filter out undercover law enforcement agents, unreliable traders and competitors.
Dark Market is only one example of such a site; there have been others and no doubt more will appear.
Why are these sites not closed down? Mainly because of the nature of the internet and its configuration.
A site registered beyond the jurisdiction of the local police force could be hiding behind other sites in unregulated countries, while in fact being operated from the small internet café in your neighbourhood.
Or, as in the case of one of the cybercriminals arrested as a key administrator of Dark Market, from your super smart, well-mannered, teenage son’s bedroom.
When American bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robs banks, he is reputed to have said: “Because that is where the money is.”
Why are credit cards the primary targets of cybercriminals? Because that is where the money is.
Credit on a gigantic scale is offered to almost everyone in the form of credit cards without the rigour required of loans in other types of credit. Trillions of dollars move in and out of businesses around the world via those plastic cards.
Physically breaking into a bank is extremely difficult, close to impossible, and comes with a very high probability of being apprehended before you walk out of the door.
There are security doors barring your way, security devices to alert local law enforcement, cameras and other sophisticated deterrents.
The weakest link in the banking system is the customer. Almost all customers are happily unaware of how their banking and credit security can be compromised; they are also protected from the consequences.
If your card was skimmed or your details cloned, “No problem,” says the polite call centre operator who called you to check if you bought five pairs of running shoes, “You won’t be charged.”
The bank does not lose because they are insured, the merchant is paid, and you did not suffer any financial loss.
If you were to bear the cost, you would cancel your cards, if the merchant had to bear the cost, he would not accept cards, and if banks had to bear the cost, they would be losing huge amounts of money.
It's a win-win - or is it?
So where is the problem? The cybercriminals win and no one involved in the crime loses. The fact is that all those who bank lose because insurance companies’ payouts have to be funded by someone, and that someone is you and me through increased bank charges.
The cybercriminals whose activities are covered in the book have been apprehended and their accounts gleaned from reports and interviews with them in prisons. They are not heavy-set thugs, but exceptionally smart young men who have uncommon skills in moving about the internet.
Some have worked on both sides on the crime line, fighting cybercrime and committing cybercrime. (On the internet, you never know whether the people you are interacting with are who they say they are.)
Others graduated from playing computer games with imaginary criminals and law enforcement agents to doing it for real and making huge amounts of money with miniscule outlay.
The same highly talented people can also get viruses onto your computer that “captures’ it, so they can do anything with it from erasing data to sending spam emails to a single site to bring it down.
And all this without the ordinary user being aware of anything amiss.
They can also insert botnets, tiny coded robots, onto your computer that can record every keystroke and send it back to someone interested in your bank details or your about-to-be-patented invention.
Detection of cybercrime is excruciatingly difficult and even when the evidence seems available, getting a conviction is equally tricky because of the recent emergence of this kind of crime.
Tired of getting those silly letters telling you that you have inherited or won millions? So you reply out of curiosity or to annoy the sender, and you have just allowed them into your life and with all its secrets!
Cybercrime is estimated as the largest area of crime in the world today and it can destroy more than your savings and identity.
This is an intriguing and worrying phenomenon. Everyone should be notified.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High ----+ Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
