Cyber Criminals Start to Market Cyber Crime

Cyber crime and cyber criminals by their very nature have always been on the cutting edge of technology. What they did not have and may have only recently developed is a business acumen to go along with their technical skills. Certain programs have always considered to be good for hackers, but that has never been their marketing strategy.

Rather than being the hobbyist who simply wants to ruin the day of another computer hacker, many companies are now offering cyber crime services - along with technical support - for when being malicious just does not require that personal touch.

Much like how computer virus software and spyware software needs to keep up to date with the latest definitions to keep a user's personal computer safe, cyber crime companies offer their latest work-arounnds to exploit the latest holes in vulnerabilities in the latest software.

Cyber crime has of course had a slightly longer history and a jump start on the people who produce tools to prevent it. The problem would first have to have been discovered before measures to prevent the act were put in place. It is no surprise cyber criminals have caught up with the business end of the industry and have started to offer regular updates to help break the law or get malicious software onto a users computer. According to the BBC, some 68,000 hacking tool packages are in circulation.

While there are sometimes legitimate uses for hacking tools such as disassemblers that allow you to look at the assembly code used to generate a program, many of them are distributed with the purpose of breaking the law in mind. Many times, a warning is distributed that the software is designed to be used for educational purposes only and the user takes the risks for any harm they might create.

This probably means very little for the average computer user except for your virus scanners or spyware packages picking up one or two more files during the sweep. Even most software labeled malicious is not actually harmful. Most is instead used for gathering marketing information, or allowing all spyware except for the programs distributed by the company who made the package from getting on your computer. Cyber crime and cyber criminals probably are not going anywhere unless they are caught or they might end up working for the Chinese government to hack into Western computer databases.

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6976308.stm