Are you really a cyber crime specialist or cyber mafia? Then what is your cost there?You may be worth of $0.25 for your official name, $2 for cell number, $150 to $500 for credit card number and $50 to $400 for bank customer ID and PIN.
You could be worth $1,000 on an average. But when you enter in corporate world and deal with corporate information, your value could run into thousands of dollars.
Gone are the days when fun and fame were the sole aim of cyber hijackers, making fast buck is the key motive of today’s cyber crackers.
These nerds can outsmart cracker king Kevin David Mitnick. The tech savvyness attached to the profession makes it proliferate in terms of value and volume, said a leading cyber expert.
A case of a Chandigarh bank executive Mr. Vasudeva can realize you the reality and power of cyber crime and their mafias.
He logged on to a social networking site, a couple of months ago. “Soon, I started receiving mails from unknown sources asking about my health and home loan details. I thought someone who knows us well was playing a prank, until a tech-savvy friend realised my computer was hijacked and turned into a BOT (a hijacked computer), a captive.
In this case, when Vasudeva logged on a virus called as malware/spyware download itself automatically in the system and started sending the files to the outsider even passwords too from where it came.
Over 10,000 computers are converted into BOTs a day and are linked into large networks of such computers, called BOTnets.
On an average, around 400 BOTs are created a day in India, says a recent study. The country has over 40 command-and-control servers having 38,465 distinct BOTs.
Among the cities, Mumbai reported a share of 33 per cent, followed by Delhi at 25 per cent, Chennai 17 per cent and Bangalore 13 per cent.
Cyber criminals sell stolen information be it credit cards, credit verification values, bank accounts on the underground economy servers. The buyer is then required to pay cash.
Unwilling to risk exposure, buyers use cashiers agents who convert the stolen information into true currency in the form of e-gold (wherein the process is instantaneous and the payments are final, ensuring no charge-backs) or through money transfers.
