Taking down Fraud Sites is like playing Whac-a-Mole
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 04/22/2015 08:51 AM
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You may wonder why the FBI or Interpol don't take down the cyber criminals sites that sell credit card and personal data.
For one thing, most of the underground sites have many registered domains. Many of them rely on domain name registrars that routinely ignore abuse requests. If one is taken down, they just switch to another domain.
More importantly, fraud shops don’t often get shut down because they are quite useful to law enforcement, banks and researchers alike. The FBI and other entities can use the web sites to find out what and who has been hacked and potentially stop the hack.
Most of these sites end up only selling a small percentage of the stolen info. The credit card info is time sensitive. The minute they are put up for sale, their value starts to decline.
Occasionally the criminals are caught and jailed, but a vast majority of the hackers are in Russia and the Ukraine. Those countries are not very interested in cyber criminals as long as they only hack other countries. They enjoy a certain amount of anonymity as long as they don't leave their country.
These sites rely heavily on good customer service. Breaking up that service and making it harder for the hackers to do business could eventually lead to that business dying on the vine.
Source: KrebsonSecurity
For one thing, most of the underground sites have many registered domains. Many of them rely on domain name registrars that routinely ignore abuse requests. If one is taken down, they just switch to another domain.
More importantly, fraud shops don’t often get shut down because they are quite useful to law enforcement, banks and researchers alike. The FBI and other entities can use the web sites to find out what and who has been hacked and potentially stop the hack.
Most of these sites end up only selling a small percentage of the stolen info. The credit card info is time sensitive. The minute they are put up for sale, their value starts to decline.
Occasionally the criminals are caught and jailed, but a vast majority of the hackers are in Russia and the Ukraine. Those countries are not very interested in cyber criminals as long as they only hack other countries. They enjoy a certain amount of anonymity as long as they don't leave their country.
These sites rely heavily on good customer service. Breaking up that service and making it harder for the hackers to do business could eventually lead to that business dying on the vine.
Source: KrebsonSecurity
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