Strategy Page
Aug 1 2009

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

August 1, 2009: Armenia recently accused neighbor Azerbaijan of hiring
Internet criminal hackers to cripple Armenian access to the
Internet. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at each other’s throats for
nearly two decades because of a land dispute. Although Azerbaijan has
more people and money (because of oil), the Armenians are better
soldiers, and the dispute has been stalemated. Then someone in the
Azerbaijan government got familiar with Internet criminal gangs, which
have been quite popular in Russia and Eastern Europe, mainly because
of either no laws against Internet based crime, or lax (or just inept)
law enforcement.

Some of the Internet gangs have made deals with local police,
especially in countries that still have a secret police force (like
Russia, Belarus, or Azerbaijan), to do Internet based dirty deeds
(spying, attacking political foes, and so on). Apparently the
Azerbaijan operation was less discreet than most, or the Internet
gangsters less capable of covering their tracks. In any event, such
Internet gangs are quite numerous. While there are thousands of
independent Internet criminals, an increasing number operate in groups
(most small, some fairly large, all members usually operating from a
different location.) Some of these groups are part of more
conventional gangs, that can provide more traditional muscle when
needed.

Most of the Internet criminal income is based on building and running
botnets (networks of illegally controlled PCs, yours might be one of
them and you wouldn’t know it). Botnets are big, and illegal,
business. There’s big money in botnets, which can be used to spew
spam, launch a widespread search for secret files, or shut down
websites with a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.

Some 4-5 million PCs worldwide have been infiltrated by hackers (who
planted a secret, "Trojan Horse" program that takes control) and
turned into "zombies". This has become a big business, with each
zombie PC in a botnet producing $300-$500 a year, or more, for those
who control them. This is after you deduct the cost of replacing
zombies that are detected and cleaned (of their secret
software). Botnets of 100,000 or more PCs are not unusual, and many of
them are for rent.

Countries like Myanmar and Mauritania have been caught using botnets
to attack political opponents, by shutting down their websites and
sneaking in and stealing data (member and contributor lists,
correspondence and planning documents). Many other nations have not
been caught, but stand accused. Many unscrupulous web users hire
Internet criminals to launch DDOS attacks. These can be carried out
for less than a hundred dollars, and even hard core on-line gamers
have rented botnets to knock opponents off line for a while.

Military Cyber War organizations are aware of the widespread
availability of mercenary Internet bot herders, and some of these
cyber thugs have been hired by major nations to do espionage and other
dirty deeds.

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress