How Smart are Hackers??? Smart Enough....

May 2009

Cybercriminals adopt industrial methods to enhance effectiveness. Cybercriminals have become industrialized to increase their effectiveness. They are increasingly using encryption to cover their tracks and prevent forensic investigators from recovering evidence, according to a security researcher for SecureWorks. The researcher, speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco on April 23, said the criminals are using virtual private networks to siphon stolen information from hacked companies so the stream of exiting data often goes undetected by the victim. They have also wised up to encrypting their hard drives so even when they are captured by authorities, evidence stored on their computers cannot be cracked. A security consultant and operator of MyNetWatchman, who spoke on a panel with the researcher, described malware-distribution services that help malicious-code creators infect machines with viruses and keystroke logging programs. The entrepreneurs behind the distribution services control legions of hacked computers corralled into botnets, and charge customers (other hackers and spammers) for the privilege of running their own malware on the hacked machines. The going rate for infection distribution varies from $5 per 1,000 computers in Asia to $130 for 1,000 installations in the United States. The distribution services are just one example of the ways that criminals in the computer underground have become industrialized to trade niche skills and expertise. The security consultant also described anonymization VPN services catering to the underground that use hijacked botnet computers to hide a criminal’s tracks. Using a VPN client, a criminal can choose any hacked system or node on the botnet through which to tunnel his traffic or access a victim’s bank account.