A crime forum is a generic term for an Internet forum specialising in computer crime and Internet fraud activities such as hacking, identity theft, phishing, pharming, malware or spamming.
During the early days of the Internet, public dial up BBSes would serve to put miscreants in touch with one another to share tips of credit card fraud, hacking and other illicit services. [1]
By the 2000s and the rise of the modern internet, modern internet forum software was preferred, with private invite-only sites being the most long lived. Sites like ShadowCrew, counterfeitlibrary.com and the Russian language carderplanet.com would specialise in various illegal activities before each eventually succumbing to law enforcement action. [2]
By 2015, notorious forums such as Darkode would be infiltrated and dismantled prior to returning with increased security. [3]
As of July 2015, there are estimated to be several hundred such forums. [4]
Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term identity theft was coined in 1964. Since that time, the definition of identity theft has been statutorily defined throughout both the U.K. and the U.S. as the theft of personally identifiable information. Identity theft deliberately uses someone else's identity as a method to gain financial advantages or obtain credit and other benefits, and perhaps to cause other person's disadvantages or loss. The person whose identity has been stolen may suffer adverse consequences, especially if they are falsely held responsible for the perpetrator's actions. Personally identifiable information generally includes a person's name, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, bank account or credit card numbers, PINs, electronic signatures, fingerprints, passwords, or any other information that can be used to access a person's financial resources.
Cybercrime is a type of crime involving a computer or a computer network. The computer may have been used in committing the crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrime may harm someone's security or finances.
Phishing is a form of social engineering where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim is navigating the site, and transverse any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, it is the most common type of cybercrime, with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Centre reporting more incidents of phishing than any other type of computer crime.
The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) are hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at their headquarters in Canberra. Under the auspices of the AFP, the AHTCC is party to the formal Joint Operating Arrangement established between the AFP, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Computer Network Vulnerability Team of the Australian Signals Directorate.
ShadowCrew was a cybercrime forum that operated under the domain name ShadowCrew.com between August 2002 and November 2004.
Brian Krebs is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals. Krebs is the author of a daily blog, KrebsOnSecurity.com, covering computer security and cybercrime. From 1995 to 2009, Krebs was a reporter for The Washington Post and covered tech policy, privacy and computer security as well as authoring the Security Fix blog.
Internet fraud prevention is the act of stopping various types of internet fraud. Due to the many different ways of committing fraud over the Internet, such as stolen credit cards, identity theft, phishing, and chargebacks, users of the Internet, including online merchants, financial institutions and consumers who make online purchases, must make sure to avoid or minimize the risk of falling prey to such scams.
Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is the data security standard created to help financial institutions process card payments securely and reduce card fraud.
Max Ray Vision is a former computer security consultant and hacker who served a 13-year prison sentence, the longest sentence ever given at the time for hacking charges in the United States. He was convicted of two counts of wire fraud, including stealing nearly 2 million credit card numbers and running up about $86 million in fraudulent charges.
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the Web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.
Roman Valerevich Seleznev, also known by his hacker name Track2, is a Russian computer hacker. Seleznev was indicted in the United States in 2011, and was convicted of hacking into servers to steal credit-card data. His activities are estimated to have caused more than $169 million in damages to businesses and financial institutions. Seleznev was arrested on July 5, 2014, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison for wire fraud, intentional damage to a protected computer, and identity theft.
TheRealDeal was a darknet website and a part of the cyber-arms industry reported to be selling code and zero-day software exploits.
A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor and I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.
dark0de, also known as Darkode, is a cybercrime forum and black marketplace described by Europol as "the most prolific English-speaking cybercriminal forum to date". The site, which was launched in 2007, serves as a venue for the sale and trade of hacking services, botnets, malware, stolen personally identifiable information, credit card information, hacked server credentials, and other illicit goods and services.
Operation Shrouded Horizon was an 18-month international law enforcement investigation culminating in the July 2015 seizure of Darkode, an online cybercrime forum and black market, and the arrest of several of its members. The case involved law enforcement agencies from 20 countries, led by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with the assistance of Europol, in what the FBI called "the largest-ever coordinated law enforcement effort directed at an online cyber criminal forum".
Carding is a term describing the trafficking and unauthorized use of credit cards. The stolen credit cards or credit card numbers are then used to buy prepaid gift cards to cover up the tracks. Activities also encompass exploitation of personal data, and money laundering techniques. Modern carding sites have been described as full-service commercial entities.
Pakbugs was a Pakistani-based security forum offering security releases updates, discussion of hacking, credit card fraud, phishing and other forms of computer crime; as well as trading in malware, bank login details and stolen credit card numbers. The forum was shut down after multiple raids by Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency on its members in 2010, in which five individuals were arrested, with the alleged founder suspected to remain at large in Riyadh.
Ghana has one of the highest rates of cybercrime in the world, ranking 7th in a 2008 Internet Crime Survey. The most popular form of cybercrime in Ghana is cyberfraud and is typically achieved via credit card fraud. However, recent decreases in universal credit card usage has seen the expansion of other cybercrimes such as blackmail and hacking. This growth in crime has warranted a government response, with policies specifically addressing the cyberspace being developed. This has necessitated various studies including a cyber security maturity study which was inaugurated by the Ministry of Communications and conducted by the Global Cyber Security Capacity Center (GCSCC) of the University of Oxford in collaboration with the World Bank.