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The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

arstechnica.com

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Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#31

Post by ommunist »

ksaitor wrote: post #5

It has always fascinated me how history, individuals, geography and natural resources influenced people, their mentality in various world regions. While Russia is rich for natural resources (diamonds, gas, oil), just a few people profit from them. Next tear of wealthy individuals mostly profit from serving those who profit from natural resources… Natural resources imply that value is already created. You dont have to…

You forgot to mention ABBYY. And cybercrime in Russian school culture is not a crime. It's something heroic. BTW the tone of the article we discuss here is all about demonising Russia. I bet you 20 quid, there are more cyber wrongdoers in the US than in Russia.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#32

Post by ommunist »

ksaitor wrote: post #23
rdl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you include Russian Jews, you get a lot of successful Russians doing tech stuff in the world -- just in other countries than Russia. Israel, the US, etc. have Russian Jewish populations who are incredibly successful in tech.

Oh yes, yes! Totally agree! In my comment I've been referring to a typical russian mentality. And Russian Jews have a very different mentality, from the one I've been referring to.

Typical Russian mentality is thorough approach to problem solving and having a good rest afterwards. Russian language itself structurally teaches your brain to be more abstract.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#34

Post by demetris »

adaml_623 wrote: post #33

I read this article and didn't notice anything about voting at all? Strange use of the word 'democratized'

I think the verb “to democratize” is used here in the extended meaning “to make accessible to all”, like democracy makes governance an affair accessible to all by making it an affair of the people.

But I agree that this use does seem strange sometimes in some contexts.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#35

Post by bflesch »

xSwag wrote: post #14
xSwag wrote: post #12

Nope all over this article. >If you want to buy a botnet, it'll cost you somewhere in the region of $700 Very vague. >ZeuS source code: $200-$500 Nope, total bullshit. It is widely available. [1] >SOCKS bot (to get around firewalls): $100 Nope. "Socks bot" refers to the ability to convert an infected computer into a SOCKSv5 proxy >Unintelligent exploit bundle: $25 This refers to exploit packs, which is obfuscated sof…

Also, just as an additional note: it is not just Russia doing this. Countries where extradition is not an option generally tend to have the largest amount of cyber crime. The list includes China[1], Germany[4], Russia, Japan[3] and France[2]. People in these countries generally target Americans, since USA has the second largest amount of internet users (245,203,319) [5] and has one of the highest GDP in the world[6].…

What you say is not correct, at least in regard to Germany. This lets me wonder about the validity of your other statements. In Germany, cyber crime is thoroughly investigated and punished, with no exception when your victims are overseas.

On top of that, the excerpt of Germany's most basic collection of laws you have linked ([4]) just states that there will be no extradiction to US. This only means that people will be punished for their crimes within Germany and not in the U.S. - but not that they won't be punished at all.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#36

Post by verroq »

bediger4000 wrote: post #6
twodayslate wrote: post #4

This isn't just a "Russian" thing.

So, we take you at face value, with no citations or other authority? What if you're one of the Russian cybercriminals? Or that hacker that the Georgian CERT unmasked? So, +1 for vaguely menacing vagueness.

How about hackforums, or as everybody calls it, skidforums.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#37

Post by s_henry_paulson »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #26
zeynalov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I don't know how did he do it. I was wondered when I saw that I can't login in to my gmail account. I thought that it's impossible someone to hack my gmail account, because Google is a big company they should have some good codes there. But it's possible. In that day my friend sent my new password per sms my and said that it was a joke. if you want to hire someone, go to free-lance.ru, in left menu sele…

Question is, will they divulge the method they used to hack your site, and if so, can you trust them to tell you everything?

You're seriously wondering whether or not someone is going to trust their secrets and the source of their income with a complete stranger, and further pondering whether or not you can trust an anonymous criminal?

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#38

Post by saym »

bediger4000 wrote: post #6
twodayslate wrote: post #4

This isn't just a "Russian" thing.

So, we take you at face value, with no citations or other authority? What if you're one of the Russian cybercriminals? Or that hacker that the Georgian CERT unmasked? So, +1 for vaguely menacing vagueness.

Your comment reminds me of a phrase I really like: "Being vague is almost as cool as this other thing."

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#39

Post by ksaitor »

YokoZar wrote: post #27
ksaitor wrote: post #5

It has always fascinated me how history, individuals, geography and natural resources influenced people, their mentality in various world regions. While Russia is rich for natural resources (diamonds, gas, oil), just a few people profit from them. Next tear of wealthy individuals mostly profit from serving those who profit from natural resources… Natural resources imply that value is already created. You dont have to…

The resource curse is very real and well documented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse The only seeming exception I can think of is Norway, which has a highly unusual massive government savings program to deal with its oil wealth, and then only discovered that wealth fairly recently.

Wow! Did not know that. Thank you for the link.

Re: The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime

#40

Post by InclinedPlane »

zeynalov wrote: post #13
achille wrote: post #9

I'd be willing to fork up the $150 to see if they could hack into my own gmail account. Seems like cheap penetration testing. Pointing them toward myself should be legal as well. So who do I pay? In fact Google should be paying them to hack honeypotted accounts and see what they try.

A year ago a "friend" of me hired a russian hacker, just for a joke, and he hacked my gmail, twitter and facebook accounts. And the passwords were random 10 caracters or something like that. He hired the hacker in free-lance.ru

You say "passwords" were they all the same password or was your gmail password unique to gmail?
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