Online privacy

The privacy is threatened by cyber criminals. These cyber criminals should be classified into two characteristics;

1. Skills

2. Motivations

Where do these cyber criminals fit in the graph?

With equal opportunity, a hacker can be a script kid, who out of curiosity launches a pre-made exploit or an expert who wants to make.

Let's see some stories;

1. The BOA factor

It was set up in 90s, boafactory.com was a website that offered credit card number for sale at a good price. This factory has stolen for about 154,000 credit card numbers from large international corporation like Marriot Hotels, Rich Solutions, DPI, SLM Soft, Global Card Service, Isabel Bloom.

And the interesting part is that Boa and his partner did not use any exploits to steals these credit card number. So, how did they do it?

They instead struck a deal with Marriott Hotels porters and other people or sent their people to work in their company. Eventually Boa was arrested in Cyprus and extradited to the U.S.and also was charged for fraudulently obtaining 2.5 million dollar.

He was also likely involved in a cyprus-registered offshore company that laundered 200 millions. Thou, they did not involve any computer system attacks, but through the personal information that was put upon the social media, did help them to get to the main person.

2. Blue Security Attacked

In 2005 blue security launched it's flagship product, the ground-breaking anti-spam system blue frog. It did not block spam, the tool instead detected the spammers address and sent back a complaint. The system utilized a retaliation mechanism.

It was so good it jeopardized the operation of the Russia company PharmaMaster, a fake viagra seller. As you see pharma master obtained e-mail addresses of blue security users, the attackers broke into the blue security system and extracted a database with user's addresses.

Simultaneously, Blue security servers were attacked: first foreign access was blocked, next a DDos (denial of service) attack cause all the servers to fold. The company transferred it's website to an external provider's servers.

After a week, this company and it's clients were also attacked and therefore, on may 17, blue security folded and withdrew blue frog. In the official statement, the company said it did not want to escalate the war.

3. Bla Bla

The software was designed to monitor the data passing through TJX his computer network to sniff out credit card numbers from the corporation. The sniffer was later used to steal credit card details from other companies.

A Cuban-American Helberg Gonzalez was the mastermind behind the attack. He was also recognized as an expert in the computer system security field before he decided to set up his own business and also used to work for several government institutions.

The software was installed in a TJX network and stole 45 million credit card numbers in two months time. TJX, however kept it's company base, and detected the intrusion after a few months. Also paid the amount, however the company did not collapse later on.

4. Chinese penis enlargemnet pills:

A virus dubbed storm worm was created in 2007 and spread as an attachment to e-mails.The virus launched a Trojan Horse in the victim computer, after the victim would open the email attachment. The computer was then added to a zombie net.

Affected machines send penis enlargement spam online and businesses are paid for redirected visitor clicks on one of the banners on a page. Storm creators made several thousand dollars a day in this way.

There was always a chance that some user may buy the product, a group behind the attack made funding. Because it attacked the servers of all the anti-virus companies that blocked attachments containing the virus.