Criminal hacker organizations are operating with increasing corporate-like efficiency and specialization, according to Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director in the FBI's cyber division.
At FOSE, a government IT trade show held in Washington last month, Chabinsky described the following specialized roles in cybercrime organizations:
• Coders, who write the exploits and malware.
• Distributors, who trade and sell stolen data.
• Tech experts, who maintain the criminal enterprise's IT infrastructure.
• Hackers, who search for and exploit vulnerabilities in applications, systems and networks.
• Fraudsters, who woo potential victims with social engineering schemes like phishing and spam.
• Hosted system providers, who offer illicit content servers.
• Cashiers, who control drop accounts and provide names and accounts to other criminals for a fee.
• Money mules, who complete wire transfers between bank accounts.
• Tellers, who transfer and launder illicit earnings through digital currency services.
• Organization leaders, who assemble the team and choose the targets.
This story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an earlier version that first ran on Computerworld.com.