Who's Behind All this Hacking - Pt. 1 - Organized Crime

Who would want to break into my home computer?

Intruders (also referred to as hackers, attackers, or crackers) may not care about your identity. Often they want to gain control of your computer so they can use it to launch attacks on other computer systems.  Having control of your computer gives them the ability to hide their true location as they launch attacks, often against high-profile computer systems such as government or financial systems. Even if you have a computer connected to the Internet only to play the latest games or to send email to friends and family, your computer may be a target.  Intruders may be able to watch all your actions on the computer, or cause damage to your computer by reformatting your hard drive or changing your data.

Many of today's intruders are sponsored by organized crime and most of the exploits we're seeing are geared to gaining control of many thousands of machines at a time through which your computer becomes part of an online neighborhood of sorts.  Once control is gained your computer can be bought and sold to the highest bidder.  Your system becomes a commodity, not unlike our own homes. In fact, this online transaction is often referred to as buying and selling  "Electronic Real Estate."  Today it is estimated that many millions of computers are part of this underground market and that there are whole "armies" of computers, under someone else's control, ready to wage cyber war against countries, organizations, and other online communities.

Organized Crime Hacking Intel Sheet

Motivation:  Support illegal/underground activities, cartels, & other activities like; human trafficking, drug trade, terrorism, bank/credit fraud.

Funding: Funded primarily with illegal sources (stolen credit card info, personal info, selling hacked computer bot networks.) Often government involvement is “two-way”.

Capabilities: Well funded/staffed efforts underway, mostly geared towards theft of financial information of direct targets, communication with actors, transfer of monies, and the masking of activities.

Advanced Hacking Techniques.  Infected websites, malware development, botnet creation, system cracking, USB flash drive infections, hard disk encryption cracking.

Data Harvesting Capacity.  Open source data gathering and correlation, system cracking and data extraction, use of keyloggers, password stealers, data capturing services, and website redirection.

Use traditional espionage techniques with hacking.  A majority of today’s botnets are designed and maintained by organized crime.  It is estimated that up to 75% of computers are infected with a virus.  Most virus’ today come from organized crime.

I believe that it is NOW time to take our systems back. We need to do all we can to seize control of our systems and provide a barrier between our systems and those intent on taking them from us.  This really is a primary purpose of this site.  I want to give you the tools, links and practices that will help you fight the bad guys.