Once considered one of the more shadowy gatherings in cyberspace, networks of online criminals or cybercrime mobs are becoming less and less shadowy lately as the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and other law enforcement agencies crack down and crack open these networks, prosecuting the reputed masterminds therein, according to a new report from Baseline, an Internet journal.
The latest and one of the larger such cybermobs, known as the Shadowcrew, has been penetrated and busted for counterfeiting, credit card craud, and various computer crimes, all of which cost card issuers and banks $4 million in losses and would have cost more if the mob hadn't been penetrated and hit, the Secret Service has estimated.
Shadowcrew is accused regarding the past two years' worth of their activity, Baseline said March 15, running a worldwide underground market which offered a reported 1.5 million credit card numbers, eighteen million e-mail accounts, and undetermined scores of identification documents from passports to drivers' licenses to student ID cards to the highest bidder.
The biggest damage Shadowcrew and similar cybermobs can wreak, according to eBay's chief security strategist Howard Schmidt, is smash the online trust businesses build with their customers and thus smash trust in the Internet itself. "If McDonald's has well-lit restaurants and the best food and the best prices, but people get mugged in the parking lot, they won't go there," the former White House cybersecurity advisor told Baseline.
There is also a growing consensus that such pestiferous cybercrimes as phishing are more and more the work of cybermobs similar to Shadow. The Anti-Phishing Working Group believes that most of thr 75-150 million scam e-mails sent every day originate from organized cybercrooks.
Shadowcrew had been under Secret Service surveillance for a year when they finally got nailed late last October, with a lot of help from a highly placed informant who ran a Shadowcrew server and helped the Secret Service set up and run an undercover sting—one that included establishing a private network that Shadowcrew members used for electronic communications and Web activity, according to the criminal indictments against the group and three top leaders in New Jersey.
The Secret Service, Baseline said, captured unique computer addresses as each message went through the sting network, and that helped lead them to two of the three Shadowcrew masterminds, Andrew Mantovani and David Appleyard. After the Secret Service set up simultaneous inside chats October 26, involving thirty Shadowcrew members, Secret Service, FBI, and local police officers, some armed and bulletproofed, swept upon suspect homes and made arrests.
There was only one glitch: a third Shadowcrew heavy, Brandon Monchamp, jumped out of a second-story window when agents knocked on his door and tried to escape on foot. Before he was captured, Baseline said, the agents found tools rather unusual for ordinary computer hackers or crackers: two loaded guns, one of them described as an assault rifle.
Mantovani and Monchamp have pleaded not guilty, while Appleyard awaits arraignment.
