NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository
NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository
NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository
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some advantages from conducting their financial transaction via their site. A legitimate<br />
example is PayPal – this service allows financial transaction between buyers and sellers<br />
without sharing financial information and gives them the flexibility to pay by card or<br />
cheque. In the underground cybercriminal business this would be illustrated by the<br />
providers <strong>of</strong> referral services. These specialised services act as a ‘trusted’ intermediary<br />
between a seller and buyer <strong>of</strong> malware and other illegal services. Such agents hold the<br />
money on the transaction until a buyer has had a chance to check that the goods or<br />
services purchased function as promised. Their fees can range from 2 per cent to 4 per<br />
cent <strong>of</strong> the total transaction. 221<br />
Internet community model: This business model is based on the creation <strong>of</strong> a virtual<br />
community <strong>of</strong> interested users who support the development <strong>of</strong> products through<br />
voluntary donations. A legitimate example is the ‘Open Source’ community. Sourceforge,<br />
the world’s largest repository <strong>of</strong> Open Source s<strong>of</strong>tware development projects, has over<br />
170,000 registered projects and nearly two million individual users. 222 The growth <strong>of</strong><br />
Open Source has provided an organising structure for many user-led projects together<br />
with a set <strong>of</strong> guiding principles and a language to describe what they are doing. Some<br />
projects, like Linux and the Apache web server, have helped to re-shape the global IT<br />
industry, whilst others have had a similar effect on music, video games, education and<br />
health. The sheer volume <strong>of</strong> Open Source activity is a strong indicator <strong>of</strong> the growth in<br />
hacking skills, and there is evidence that communities <strong>of</strong> hackers are developing<br />
attacking tools mimicking Open Source communities. There are examples such as the<br />
distribution <strong>of</strong> Try2DDoS, a tool that automates distributed denial <strong>of</strong> service attacks. It<br />
was first released in June 2005 on Underground Konnekt, a French hacker website. Over<br />
the next two years, identical source code turned up in China, Guatemala, Russia and<br />
Argentina. As the programme moved around the globe within the online community <strong>of</strong><br />
hackers, the tool gained new capabilities, including support for Spanish and Chinese<br />
languages. 223 The community <strong>of</strong> ‘users’ play a critical role in fostering innovation in this<br />
business model. There is also the opportunity for revenue to be generated around open<br />
source from related services such as systems integration, product support, tutorials and<br />
user documentation.<br />
221 Symantec (2008), “Symantec Report on the Underground Economy”, July 07–June 08.<br />
222 http://sourceforge.net/, accessed May 16, 2008.<br />
223 Dan Goodin, (2008), <strong>Online</strong> crime gangs embrace open source ethos: Malware gets globalized, 17th<br />
January 2008; www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/globalization_<strong>of</strong>_crimeware/.<br />
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