Is China Serious about Cybercrime

Domestically

As hacking hits home, China has vowed to fight cybercrime by making examples out of a few cyber criminals but is it enough? China’s antiquated cybercrime criminal code has recently made advances to help address the burgeoning problem that has started to affect small to large domestic businesses. In the past few years, Chinese hackers have started to demand money from small Chinese businesses or else… Typically, the hackers will initiate a DDoS attack against a business and then demand ransom to restore the system back to health. As a result, China has shown that they are putting forth some effort to combat this growing cyber crime problem…

Internationally

China has been called by experts, “The world’s malware factory” and for good reason. The country has developed into a major source of online attacks and zero-day attacks, which focus on unknown software vulnerabilities. In another article, “In China, $700 puts a Spammer in Business”, a valuable tool for spammers and a big problem for security professionals around the world is called bullet proof hosting. Usually, a web hosting providers will shut down a web site quickly, if large amounts of bulk emails are sent out and directing people to your site. However, with bulletproof hosting spammers don’t have to be concerned about being shut down because of spam complaints. The Chinese registers simply ignore the take-down requests, which cause a grey area for international cooperation. It should be noted that there are several major bullet proofing servers around the world but the vast majority are located in China. If the Chinese are truly serious about combating cybercrime they must address all aspects of internet security. It is true that actions speak louder than words…

The Godfather of Credit Card Fraud

Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov is known by some as the Godfather of Credit Card Fraud. Mr. Golubov is active on the underground Web site CarderPlanet and he is considered an expert at both Trojan horse and malware hacking. His arrest in July 2005, at the ripe old age of 22, was front page news in the war on computer crime.

To read more on this article go to the Cape Cod Times April 29, 2008 article: “Meet Mr. Malware, and see how to avoid him”.