The Underground Economy
The Underground Economy: Priceless
Full Citation
Rob Thomas and Jerry Martin, The Underground Economy: Priceless, ;login:, Dec. 2006, at 7. Web
Categorization
Issues: Economics of Cybersecurity
Key Words
underground economy, money, cash, statistics, criminal activity, crime, criminals, economics, cashiers, theft, IRC, prosecution
Synopsis
The underground economy is fertile ground for the pursuit and prosecution of the miscreants. Most of the underground economy servers are public, advertised widely, and easy to find (standard IRC ports, very descriptive DNS RRs, etc.). There is absolutely no presumption of privacy in the underground economy; the channels aren’t hidden, the channels have no keys, and the servers have no passwords. There is evidence of physical crime as well as online crime, and admissions of guilt, and all are readily available. Although the data in this article is obfuscated, these stanzas of gross fraud come with the name, address, phone number, SSN, and mother’s maiden name of the victim. That seems ready-made for a complaint. It is time to use the miscreants’ greatest asset, the underground economy, against them.