Fergie's Tech Blog

Cyber Crime Glimpse: Making $1M a Month

Kelly Jackson Higgins writes on Dark Reading's "I, Shadow":

If software vulnerabilities are costing the U.S. $180 billion per year as David Price says in his new book, "Geekconomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software," just how much are the bad guys making?

Price, director of the Monterey Group and a SANS course instructor, says we really don't know. But there are some shocking examples of just how lucrative cybercrime can be, Price says.

Take the infamous 76service.com, which was run by two enterprising criminals who call themselves 76 and Exoric. The two (who are now apparently on the lam) cleared a cool one million dollars per month in a scheme modeled after portfolio investments, Price says.

They sold access to infected PCs (think bots), but apparently didn't do any of the data-stealing themselves, he says. "The 76service sold all these 'owned' machines in what they called a 'project,'" Rice explains. The buyer would harvest any valuable data off the machine, and sell that information to the black market.

posted by Fergie @ 11/29/2007 06:16:00 PM