Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to sift through
Speaker 1: mountains of research and boil it all down to the
Speaker 1: key insights you need, pure signal, no noise.
Speaker 2: And today we're doing a deep dive that honestly should
Speaker 2: change how you think about cybersecurity. Forget that old image,
Speaker 2: you know, the loan hacker in the dark room. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's well, that's history now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're moving way beyond just basic firewalls and viruses. Today.
Speaker 1: We're looking at cybercrime as it actually is, a professional, global,
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar industry. It runs with startling efficiency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our mission today is to pull back the curtain
Speaker 2: on this global criminal machine. We're going to unpack the
Speaker 2: economics behind it, the sophisticated business models they use, and
Speaker 2: maybe most importantly, the core structural problems with the Internet
Speaker 2: itself that makes stopping these guys so incredibly hard.
Speaker 1: And let's just start with the hook, the core reason
Speaker 1: this whole thing is exploded. It's what the research calls
Speaker 1: an incredibly high risk to pay off ratio exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean think about it, You as a criminal could
Speaker 2: potentially make millillions and fast with a really surprisingly low
Speaker 2: chance of actually getting caught.
Speaker 1: When you have an incentive structure like that, Well, you're
Speaker 1: basically guaranteeing a boom in organized crime, it's inevitable.
Speaker 2: And organized is absolutely the word. To really get the
Speaker 2: scale here, you have to understand these aren't mostly individuals
Speaker 2: doing it for kicks anymore. No, this is organized groups.
Speaker 2: They operate globally, and honestly, they often mimic legitimate businesses.
Speaker 1: That comparison really struck me. In the research. We're talking
Speaker 1: actual ecosystems. Aren't we like networks of partners, distributors, maybe
Speaker 1: even franchise operations all working together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whether it's stealing credit card data or launching some
Speaker 2: complex ransomware attack, it's like business strategy, but for crime.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if it's a business, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: damage it causes. How do we even quantify that? It
Speaker 1: seems like it goes way beyond just the money they steal.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, we need a proper framework for this.
Speaker 2: The sources break down the total cost to society into
Speaker 2: four main buckets.
Speaker 1: Okay, four buckets. I guess the most obvious costs are
Speaker 1: the ones we see up front, like the money we
Speaker 1: spend trying to stop attacks, and the money we lose
Speaker 1: when they succeed.
Speaker 2: That's where most people start. Yeah, and those are huge.
Speaker 2: You've got the anticipation cost, that's everything we spend before
Speaker 2: an attack happens, antivirus, software, security teams, training, all that defensive.
Speaker 1: Stuff, right, proactive measures.
Speaker 2: Then there's the consequence cost. That's the immediate hit, the
Speaker 2: money stolen, the data wiped out, maybe even physical damage
Speaker 2: if they hit critical infrastructure. The direct impact.
Speaker 1: So defense and direct loss, got it, But stopping there
Speaker 1: feels like we're missing a huge part of the picture.
Speaker 1: Which of these cost categories do you think people usually
Speaker 1: underestimate the most?
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely the next two. They deal with the fallout,
Speaker 2: the sort of longer term systemic damage. First is the
Speaker 2: response cost.
Speaker 1: Response cost so cleaning up the mess pretty much.
Speaker 2: Think about all the effort after the attack, investigations, court costs,
Speaker 2: law enforcement time. These are the since we count on
Speaker 2: to hold people accountable and frankly, they're overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. And the last one indirect cost.
Speaker 1: That sounds subtle, maybe.
Speaker 2: It is, but it's massive. Indirect costs is all that
Speaker 2: ripple damage. It's the hit to a company's reputation, it's
Speaker 2: people losing trust and doing business online, which then drags
Speaker 2: down revenues across the board.
Speaker 1: Ah, the erosion of trust exactly.
Speaker 2: So when you add it all up, the anticipation, the consequence,
Speaker 2: and these indirect costs, that's the real cost to society.
Speaker 2: And it's way way bigger than just the dollar amount
Speaker 2: stolen in any single attack. It's the price we pay
Speaker 2: for trying to keep the digital world trustworthy.
Speaker 1: Trust is definitely expensive. Yeah, Okay, let's shift gears a bit.
Speaker 1: How has this become so industrialized? You mentioned mimicking businesses.
Speaker 1: There's this concept called cybercrime as a service or katah
Speaker 1: that sounds key oh.
Speaker 2: Costs as a game changer. It's basically the great democratizer
Speaker 2: yep for criminals. It completely breaks the link between needing
Speaker 2: deep technical skill and being able to launch a really
Speaker 2: sophisticated attack.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to be a coding genius anymore,
Speaker 1: not at all.
Speaker 2: If you've got the money, you can just rent the
Speaker 2: tools or the infrastructure. You can even hire the expertise
Speaker 2: you need. It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry.
Speaker 1: It really does sound like I don't know, aws for
Speaker 1: the underworld, Like you can just pick and choose what
Speaker 1: you need off a menu.
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. Actually it's very segmented. You might
Speaker 2: start with say, initial access tools, meaning meaning people selling
Speaker 2: ways to get in like exploit kits, targeting known flaws
Speaker 2: or even zero days. Those are vulnerabilities nobody else knows
Speaker 2: about yet. Basically they're selling you the key to the
Speaker 2: front door.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you buy the key. Then what you need
Speaker 1: something to actually do the damage right precisely.
Speaker 2: Then you move up the menu to payloads. This is
Speaker 2: the actual malicious software, things like botnitz to control armies
Speaker 2: of computers, spyware to steal info, or rit's remote access
Speaker 2: trojans to take over a machine completely.
Speaker 1: That's the heavy machinery. And what if you're like totally
Speaker 1: non technical but still want to cause chaos, then.
Speaker 2: You go for the premium option full services. You can
Speaker 2: literally hire hackers, hackers for hire, or maybe the most
Speaker 2: infamous is DDAs as a service. They'll run the whole
Speaker 2: distributed denial of service attack for you. Start to finish.
Speaker 1: Wow, they even handle the logistics.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and they're enabling services too, things like manipulating
Speaker 2: search results to send people to fake websites, or designing
Speaker 2: convincing phishing pages. It's really end to end criminal support.
Speaker 1: This scale is just staggering. And to make it even
Speaker 1: more real, let's talk price tags. The research shows these
Speaker 1: underground markets have surprisingly specific price lists, usually paid crypto
Speaker 1: right for anonymity almost always.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crypto makes tracing payments much harder.
Speaker 1: So what's a really shocking example from these price lists?
Speaker 2: For me, it's the cost of stolen identity info, credit
Speaker 2: card details. They can go for as little as two dollars,
Speaker 2: up to maybe ninety dollars for a high limit card
Speaker 2: with all the extra data.
Speaker 1: But two dollars two dollars for someone's financial identity. That's
Speaker 1: incredibly cheap, and that low price must mean huge volume exactly.
Speaker 2: It makes identity theft of volume business. And it's not
Speaker 2: just data renting. A dedo or ass attack that might
Speaker 2: only cost you sixty to ninety dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: Sixty bucks an hour to potentially take down a major website.
Speaker 2: That's the reality. When the price is that low, anyone
Speaker 2: with a grudge and a bit of cash can cause
Speaker 2: massive disruption. It fuels that whole can as.
Speaker 1: Model and things like ransomware are those expensive.
Speaker 2: To get, not necessarily the basic versions generic ransomware kits,
Speaker 2: you know, the software build itself maybe two hundred to
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy dollars. Or buying compromise social media
Speaker 2: bots for spamming or manipulation rund one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: to two hundred and seventy dollars. It's cheap enough to
Speaker 2: be almost an impulse buy for a would be criminal.
Speaker 2: Classic low cost, potentially high reward.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this Kullias model is thriving, making crime easy
Speaker 1: and cheap. But it only works because, as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the digital world itself has some fundamental issues, problems that
Speaker 1: protect the attackers.
Speaker 2: That's the core of it. It really starts with the
Speaker 2: Internet's basic design. The source material calls it a major
Speaker 2: structural shortfall.
Speaker 1: Meaning it just wasn't built with today's crime in mind.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Think about the old phone system. It had tracking
Speaker 2: and billing built in from day one, right host to
Speaker 2: host communication was trackable. The Internet wasn't designed that way.
Speaker 2: It was built for openness and resilience, not for easily
Speaker 2: tracking every connection back to its source.
Speaker 1: That's the technical flaw. But then there's a huge legal
Speaker 1: and political problem layered on top. Isn't there the whole
Speaker 1: borderless crisis?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. Cybercrime jumps borders instantly, but laws, law enforcement
Speaker 2: they're stuck within national boundaries, getting cooperation between countries, dealing
Speaker 2: with different legal systems, extradition, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 1: So the criminals operate globally, but the cops are stuck locally.
Speaker 2: That's a big part of it. It creates huge enforcement gaps.
Speaker 1: And while law enforcement is navigating red tape, the criminals
Speaker 1: are using specific techniques to cover their tracks. What's the
Speaker 1: simplest one. IP spoofing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, AKI spoofing is basic but effective. It's like sending
Speaker 2: a letter with a fake return address. You forge the
Speaker 2: source IP address on the malicious data packets.
Speaker 1: You send, so it looks like the attack came from
Speaker 1: somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Right. If the victim system tries to respond, the response
Speaker 2: goes to the innocent forged address the real attacker, they
Speaker 2: just disappear.
Speaker 1: Okay, simple impersonation. What about reflector hosts? That sounds a
Speaker 1: bit more complex.
Speaker 2: It's a step up. Think of a reflector host as
Speaker 2: an unwitting middleman, an intermediate computer. The attacker bounces their
Speaker 2: malicious traffic off this reflector towards the actual target.
Speaker 1: So the reflector gets the attack traffic.
Speaker 2: First exactly, and then it forwards it. If the victim responds,
Speaker 2: they respond to the reflector host, not the original attacker.
Speaker 2: It acts like a shield, making it look like the
Speaker 2: attack originated from that innocent third party server.
Speaker 1: Okay, using innocent bystanders as shields nasty. And the last
Speaker 1: technique mention is stepping stones. What's that about?
Speaker 2: Stepping stone involves creating a chain. An attacker compromises one computer,
Speaker 2: then uses that computer to log into a second compromised computer,
Speaker 2: that maybe a third.
Speaker 1: And so on, a whole chain of hacked machines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a connection chain. They launched the final attack from
Speaker 2: the last computer in that chain. So if anyone tries
Speaker 2: to trace it back to hit that last machine and
Speaker 2: maybe the one before it. But tracing the entire chain
Speaker 2: back to the original attacker is incredibly.
Speaker 1: Hard, especially if those machines are all different types in
Speaker 1: different places.
Speaker 2: Exactly, different operating systems, different network administrators, maybe spread across
Speaker 2: multiple countries. It makes forensic trace back a massive headache.
Speaker 1: So because criminals use all these clever ways to hide
Speaker 1: spoofing reflectors stepping stones. We need special tools just to
Speaker 1: figure out where attacks are even coming from. That's where
Speaker 1: trace back schemes come.
Speaker 2: In, right. Trace back is essentially trinked to bolt on
Speaker 2: the tracking capability that wasn't built into the Internet originally.
Speaker 2: It's about finding the true source of those malicious packets
Speaker 2: despite the evasion techniques. And how do they generally, Well,
Speaker 2: they're different approaches. Some involve trying to get routers along
Speaker 2: the path to log information about the packets passing through.
Speaker 2: Others involve actually marking the packets themselves as they travel.
Speaker 1: Marking the packets like putting a little digital tag on
Speaker 1: them sort of.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You have things like probabilistic packet marking where routers
Speaker 2: randomly mark some packets with path information, yeah, or deterministic
Speaker 2: packet marking where maybe the entry router marks everything. The
Speaker 2: goal is the same, create a bread frumb trail.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like we're constantly playing catchup, trying to
Speaker 1: add tracking onto a system that was fundamentally designed not
Speaker 1: to be easily tracked.
Speaker 2: That's the fundamental pension. Yes, we're trying to retrofit accountability
Speaker 2: onto a system prized for its initial openness and well,
Speaker 2: anonymity to some extent.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pull this together. Quick recap of the big takeaways.
Speaker 1: Cybercrime isn't hobbyists anymore. It's a professional, very profitable industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a global enterprise using this as a service model
Speaker 2: to make sophisticated attacks accessible to all almost anyone with
Speaker 2: the cash.
Speaker 1: And it thrives because it exploits both the internets built
Speaker 1: in lack of tracking and the huge problems with international
Speaker 1: law enforcement cooperation.
Speaker 2: Blue risk, high reward built on systemic weaknesses. That's the
Speaker 2: grim picture.
Speaker 1: It really is stark. We want to leave you the
Speaker 1: listener with one final thought that ties right back to
Speaker 1: that core design issue we discussed.
Speaker 2: Remember how the Internet's original design didn't include those robust
Speaker 2: tracking and billing features like the old phone network. That
Speaker 2: wasn't an oversight. It was a choice for openness. But
Speaker 2: the consequence is this deep structural problem in identifying where
Speaker 2: attacks originate, which.
Speaker 1: Leads to a really challenging question for you to think about.
Speaker 1: If the Internet's very architecture was built in part to
Speaker 1: resist easy tracking of user behavior, can all our security patches,
Speaker 1: our detection systems, ever truly win this fight against borderless
Speaker 1: sophisticated cybercrime, or are we fundamentally fighting an uphill battle
Speaker 1: against the system's own design