black market

Mobile carriers partner with FCC to battle cell phone theft

Almost everyone knows someone who has had their cell phone stolen. And most likely, there wasn't much that person could do about it. Some mobile carriers and the U.S. government are now trying to change that.

The Federal Communications Commission announced today that it is partnering with four major carriers to work toward curbing rampant cell phone theft, according to The New York Times. The plan is to jointly create a centralized database of lost or stolen cell phone information that will make it easy to track the devices and cutoff voice and data service.

"It's … Read more

Report: Stolen data sold over online black market

Cybercriminals buy and sell stolen information using a vast network of online stores, forums, and even social-networking accounts, according to a report released yesterday by PandaLabs.

Posing as a cybercriminal to gain access to this online black market, PandaLabs researchers uncovered a world where the bad guys work together to buy and sell stolen bank account information, credit card numbers, passwords, and other products. Much of this illegal enterprise is done through online stores and forums, but PandaLabs found criminals using Facebook and Twitter accounts to set up shop as well.

Though this black market is relatively open, the security … Read more

Symantec exhibit makes cybercrime tangible

SAN FRANCISCO--For many people, the concepts of botnets, software exploits, and underground marketplaces are fairly abstract. To solve that problem, Symantec has created a Black Market exhibit that attempts to make these virtual ideas more tangible.

The security company gave tours of its Black Market at the RSA security conference here this week.

"We really wanted to create a sensory experience so that everyone would realize that cybercrime is happening to us all the time. We tried to portray the view that you are being scammed and defrauded $20 at a time," Rhonda Shantz, vice president of consumer … Read more

Study: Prescription-free drug sites still abound

Improved e-mail filtering and government crackdowns might've deterred some of the once-ubiquitous spammers peddling prescription-free Viagra on the Web, but a new study from Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has found that many of those sites are still alive and kicking.

The CASA study, resulting from its fifth annual "You've Got Drugs!" investigation, did find that there has been a decline in the total count of Web sites hawking controlled drugs: 365 of them, compared to 581 in 2007's study.

But it's still alarming, CASA said, because few of … Read more