Underground World of Phishers

Security researchers Nitesh Dhanjani and Billy Rios were recently combing through the web site code of a site infected with phishing scripts when they made a discovery. Using strings from the scripts as search keys, they were able to ferret out an underground network of phishing scammers and observe the intricacies of the trade. The fundamentals consist of the fact of there being an existing market for selling compromised network hosts, selling phishing "kits" and selling stolen identities. Furthermore, the thieves steal from one another on a regular basis. For example, despite selling the compromised server, the original hacker retains the ability to get into it and sell it again. Or the programmers of the phishing kits leave backdoors in order to get all the stolen ids sent to them in duplicate, even though the other thieves performed the heist.