The Center for Cyber Forensics and Information Security (CCFIS) reported in a blog: "The FBI has recently classified the different 'professional positions' they have encountered in the cyber-crime business, in an attempt to describe the most common figures that profit through online theft, extortion and fraud. According to the FBI, cyber-crime organizations operate like companies, with experts specialized in each area and position. Yet unlike most companies, they don’t have timetables, holidays or weekends.
The most common ‘positions’ or specializations according to the FBI are:
- Programmers. Who develop the exploits and malware used to commit cyber-crimes.
- Distributors. Who trade and sell stolen data and act as vouchers for the goods provided by other specialists.
- Tech experts. Who maintain the criminal enterprise’s IT infrastructure, including servers, encryption technologies, databases, and the like.
- Hackers. Who search for and exploit applications, systems and network vulnerabilities.
- Fraudsters. Who create and deploy various social engineering schemes, such as phishing and spam.
- Hosted systems providers. Who offer safe hosting of illicit content servers and sites.
- Cashiers. Who control drop accounts and provide names and accounts to other criminals for a fee.
- Money mules. Who complete wire transfers between bank accounts. The money mules may use student and work visas to travel to the U.S. to open bank accounts.
- Tellers. Who are charged with transferring and laundering illicitly gained proceeds through digital currency services and different world currencies.
- Organization Leaders. Often "people persons" without technical skills. The leaders assemble the team and choose the targets.
Now that it is a little more real who these people are and that they are in it for the money full time, your awareness may come up to the point that from now on, any email that has a link and/or an attachment gets looked at with a healthy dose of skepticism and the "STOP LOOK THINK" rule...
