An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Internet Miscreants

Abstract

This paper studies an active underground economy which specializes in the commoditization of activities such as credit car d fraud, identity theft, spamming, phishing, online credential the ft, and the sale of compromised hosts. Using a seven month trace of logs collected from an active underground market operating on public Internet chat networks, we measure how the shift from “hacking for fun” to “hacking for profit” has given birth to a societal subs trate mature enough to steal wealth into the millions of dollars in less than one year.