Criminal Intent
7 ways criminals are making money from cyber crime
- By Andrew Deen
- Nov 01, 2017
As more of our lives move online, crime
has unfortunately migrated to the internet
at matching pace taking form in what’s
now considered cybercrime. Cybercrime
can take a vast number of forms, ranging
from the illegal sale of goods and services
to masquerading as another person to steal money from financial
institutions.
Data breach. One of the most common online threats is a data
breach. Data breaches can take many forms, but at its core, a
data breach occurs when a criminal illegally accesses important—
and often confidential—information from a company’s database.
These attacks are distressingly common as in 2014 there were 783
data breaches in the United States alone. Some data breaches involve
the collection of customer’s credit card data, while others
involve proprietary information specific to the company itself.
Often these attacks lead to the criminals threatening to release
the affected companies’ data unless they are paid off.
Selling illegal goods. Beyond the threat
of data breaches, cybercriminals also participate
in the thriving online ecosystem of
buying and selling a products and services,
most of which have been deemed illegal
in countries around the world. One of
the most well-known hubs of this form of
cyber activity was Silk Road whose users
purchased more than 213 million dollars
in goods before the site was shut down by
the police. The vast majority of the site’s
offerings were illegal drugs and at the time
the website was shut down, there were
more than 10,000 items listed, around
7,000 of which were illegal drugs like cannabis,
MDMA and heroin.
Bitcoin and the dark Web. Silk Road
operated primarily by use of an online
currency called Bitcoin, which allows both
the purchaser and the seller to remain
completely anonymous. Through Bitcoin,
the users of Silk Road were able to carry
on their business over the course of several
years. Eventually, however, federal agents
were able to track down the founder of
Silk Road, who has since been sentenced
to life in prison without parole for his role
in operating the website. While Silk Road
itself has been shut down, a variety of
sites have developed to take its place.
The lengths to which these agents had
to go were compounded by one key element
in the cybercrime economy: the dark
web. Criminals rarely list their ill-gotten
goods and services where they will be easy
for the police to find. Rather, they hide
them away in unlisted websites infamously
called the dark web. Sites located on the
dark web are protected by superlative
degrees of encryption, as well as various
browsing technologies that we will not
dwell on here. The crucial element is that
if one does not know what to look for and
how to look for it, these websites are a totally
hidden part of the Internet.
Tax fraud. Taxes are a pain for everyone,
but cybercriminals have found a way
to make profit from them. Using stolen social
security numbers, cybercriminals file
fraudulent tax returns in order to claim
refunds in the names of their victims. The
harm in this is not limited to the criminals’
fraudulent gains, as money can spill over
to the victim whose identity they used.
Through some websites, criminals may be
able to purchase social security numbers
and other personal information for as
little as $250.
Commonly, the first indication a victim
whose tax returns have been filed by a cybercriminal
will come when the IRS rejects
their initial tax return. Unfortunately, this
may only be the beginning of the victim’s
trouble, as once an individual’s identity has
been stolen, that information will frequently
be sold and traded around the internet
as widely as the cybercriminal can.
Identity theft. Due to wide variety of
cybercrimes associated with personal information,
identity theft is a particularly
common element of cybercrime. In 2015,
13.1 million Americans were victims of
identity theft, ranging from illegitimate
transactions made under the victims’ name
to criminals opening new credit cards using
their victim’s information to even combining
personal information from several
victims to create a new identity. Many attacks
happen as a result of the victim not
properly securing their personal data, particularly
their passwords. This common
error in security can lead to criminal activity
that avoids any need to steal another
person’s identity.
Instead, a criminal will acquire their
victim’s login information to one service,
such as a streaming service like Netflix.
Once this information is acquired, it is a
simple matter of selling it in the dark web,
often for less than $10. The criminal will
then see what other services they can access
with that information, selling the data
as a collection. Password re-use makes
this much easier for criminals to gain access
to a variety of services, all of which
can be sold to the prospective buyer in a
bundle. For example, if a victim used the
same password for their email address and
their login to a streaming service, it would
be possible for a criminal to gain access to
the email account tied to the account.
Counterfeit. Counterfeit money is another
rising problem online, with counterfeiters
taking advantage of the anonymity
of the internet to distribute their forged
currency. Recent reports show that this
problem is particularly prevalent in Germany
and other European Union countries,
with fake bills, particularly fifty-euro
bills making up roughly half of the counterfeited
bills recovered by authorities.
Criminals are not limiting their sales to
the finished product; however, materials
for new counterfeiters to produce their
own fake bills and coins are also rapidly
becoming widely available.
There were 86,500 cases involving counterfeit
money were reported in 2015, more
than double the frequency in 2011. Counterfeit
bills are so common and profitable
for criminals that for 600 dollars, a criminal
can acquire $2,500 in U.S. dollars that are
guaranteed to pass common pen and ultraviolet
light tests. As counterfeiters continue
to push the limits of their printing technology,
the deep web will surely advance in
step, and the market will only grow.
Medical information. Cyber criminals
are not limiting their fraud to counterfeiting;
doctor’s offices, pharmacies and the
entire medical system are at risk for cybercrime.
For example, in June, a hacker
was attempting to sell more than 600,000
patient healthcare records harvested from
three healthcare providers around the
United States. These records present a
wide sweep of dangers to the victims and
to society at large.
Not only would the purchaser of these
records be able to use this information
for any number of fraudulent purposes,
but there is a real possibility of using the
information in these records to purchase
prescription drugs. Beyond trafficking illegally
acquired drugs, criminals would be
able to submit false claims to Medicare,
placing an additional burden on a system
designed to help people when they need it
most. Health care companies are fighting
these threats as best as they are able, but
the one constant in cyber-crime is a constantly
changing variety of threats.
These varieties of crime are by no
means the total extent of criminal activity
online. Rather, they offer an introduction
to understanding some of the ways
that a criminal can take advantage of our
online economy. Unfortunately, there is no
way to protect oneself entirely from these
threats, but a careful use of the internet
will go a long way to keeping you safe
from the threat of cybercrime.
This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue of Security Today.