Security Blog
The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet
New research: The underground market fueling for-profit abuse
September 24, 2015
Posted by Kurt Thomas and Elie Bursztein, Google Anti-Fraud and Abuse Research
Recently, we teamed up with top researchers exploring innovative anti-abuse strategies to build a holistic understanding of for-profit abuse. The full report, which you can read
here
, was presented in June at the
Workshop on the Economics of Information Security
2015.
Over the last decade, Internet crime has matured into an underground economy where a large number of globally distributed criminals trade in data, knowledge, and services specifically geared towards defrauding users and businesses. Within this black market, criminals buy and sell compromised machines, scam hosting, exploit kits, and wholesale access to pilfered user records including usernames and passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive personal data. The availability of such specialized resources has transformed for-profit abuse into a cooperative effort among criminals each satisfying a cog in a supply chain.
Profiting from abuse: a bird's eye view
Here’s an example of the underground value chain required to make money from spamming knock-off luxury products:
In aggregate, the problem may appear intractable to stop. However, if we view this scenario in an economic light, then increasing the cost of fake accounts, phone numbers, or compromised websites cuts into the profitability of abuse. In the end, abuse propped up by cost-ineffective resources will crumble.
Collaborating to better understand the underground
Given the complex underbelly of abuse, we pulled together experts from industry and academia to build a systematic understanding of how criminals operate. Our previous example represents just one configuration of a value chain. In our example, revenue originates solely from victims buying counterfeit products. Criminals could adapt this strategy to scam users into paying for fake anti-virus, defraud advertisers via clickbots, or liquidate a victim’s banking assets. Regardless of the composition, we argue there is always a profit center through which victims transfer new capital into the underground. These schemes form a spectrum between selling products to unwitting victims to outright theft. A medley of alternatives such as dating scams, call-center scams, premium SMS fraud, DDoS extortion, or even stealing and re-selling gaming assets all fall within this spectrum and ultimately derive a payout from victims outside the underground.
These profit centers are in turn propped up by an ecosystem of support infrastructure that can be configured arbitrarily by criminals per their requirements. This infrastructure includes compromised hosts, human labor, networking and hosting, and accounts and engagement—all available for a fee. For example, 1,000 Google accounts cost on the order of $170, compared to CAPTCHAs which cost $1 per thousand. These costs reflect socio-economic factors as well as the impact of technical, legal, and law enforcement interventions on the availability of resources.
Redefining the abuse arms race
Client and server-side security has dominated industry’s response to digital abuse over the last decade. The spectrum of solutions—automated software updates, personal anti-virus, network packet scanners, firewalls, spam filters, password managers, and two-factor authentication to name a few—all attempt to reduce the attack surface that criminals can penetrate.
While these safeguards have significantly improved user security, they create an arms race: criminals adapt or find the subset of systems that remain vulnerable and resume operation. To overcome this reactive defense cycle, we are improving our approach to abuse fighting to also strike at the support infrastructure, financial centers, and actors that incentivize abuse. By exploring the value chain required to bulk register accounts, we were able to make Google accounts
30–40% more expensive on the black market
.
Success stories from our academic partners include
disrupting payment processing
for illegal pharmacies and counterfeit software outlets advertised by spam,
cutting off access to fake accounts
that pollute online services, and
disabling the command and control
infrastructure of botnets.
No comments :
Post a Comment
Labels
#sharethemicincyber
#supplychain #security #opensource
android
android security
android tr
app security
big data
biometrics
blackhat
C++
chrome
chrome enterprise
chrome security
connected devices
CTF
diversity
encryption
federated learning
fuzzing
Gboard
google play
google play protect
hacking
interoperability
iot security
kubernetes
linux kernel
memory safety
Open Source
pha family highlights
pixel
privacy
private compute core
Rowhammer
rust
Security
security rewards program
sigstore
spyware
supply chain
targeted spyware
tensor
Titan M2
VDP
vulnerabilities
workshop
Archive
2024
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2023
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2022
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2021
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2020
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2019
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2018
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2017
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2016
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Sep
Aug
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
2010
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
May
Apr
Mar
2009
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
Mar
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
May
Feb
2007
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Feed
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
Follow
No comments :
Post a Comment