Security Firm Warns of Crimeware-as-a-Service Toolkit Trend

Want to start an online criminal enterprise but lack the knowhow to build and maintain it? According to security firm Finjan you don't need to be "connected" anymore to start and run your own cybercrime syndicate.

According to Finjan's Malicious Code Research Center outlined in a new report online criminals that use malware, botnets, and malicious computer code are creating toolkits for other less-computer savvy crooks to use. Stealing a page from software companies that manage desktop software remotely, cybercriminals are doing the same. Toolkits, according to Finjan, are managed remotely from the installation of the crimeware program, to how to best use the toolkit to attack a computer network, to offering ongoing maintenance.

The Crimeware-as-a-service trend is a potentially potent threat to network security, Finjan reports. By making cybercrime toolkits more easily accessible and painless to use can only lead to an increase in number of targeted attacks.

You Do the Crime, You Do the Time

By selling the toolkits to third parties crooks avoid the risk of getting caught perpetrating the cyber crimes, notes Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's chief technology officer.

"Currently, we see the rise of the Crimeware-as-a-Service business model in the Crimeware-toolkit market. Cybercriminals and criminal organizations are getting better and better at protecting themselves from law enforcement by using the Crimeware services, especially since the operator does not necessarily conduct the criminal activities related to the data that is being compromised but only provides the infrastructure for it," Ben-Itzhak says.

Cyberware Customer Support

Need help on how to infiltrate that fortune 500's firewall? As with other software support options, according to Finjan, crimeware comes with regular patches and updates to outsmart anti-forensic attack techniques.

The trend takes ups the ante in the trade of stolen data to the highest bidder. Now someone interested in corporate espionage, cyber terrorism, or that seeks to break into a department store?s computer system can subscribe or buy a service that helps them attack, infect, and distills harvested stolen data so it can be easily understood, according to Finjan.

Finjan says it unearthed the crimeware trend in 2007 when it began to see cybercrime toolkits being marketed to specific geographic areas and to potential buyers of various industries.

The move by cybercriminals to sell tools differs greatly from cybercrooks perpetrating their own cybercrimes as reported in this 2005 PC World special report Web of Crime.

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