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Cyber crimeRansomware

Evolution of Cybercrime

To move forward, we need to look into the past to figure out what the best course of action is. Take a trip down memory lane with this infographic to see how far we've come in securing the digital world.

Cyber crimeRansomware & extortionPhishing & BECCybercriminal undergroundDeep dives
October 29th, 2018 5 min read TrendAI™ Research
TrendAI
The Evolution of Cybercrime and Cyberdefense
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A Joint Trend Micro-U.S. Secret Service Research Project

More Than a Decade of Making the World Cybersecure

The Carding Era

2000-2010

The cybercriminal underground could have started with Russian carding forums and marketplaces where criminals offered stolen payment card details to anyone who wished to carry out identity theft and phishing attacks. Payment card owners were usually subjected to phishing attacks that gave cybercriminals unrestricted access to their personally identifiable information (PII). Stolen details were sold to other criminals who then produced fake payment cards. Probably the biggest of such sites was CarderPlanet, which was founded in 2001 by Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov, along with Roman Vega and Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin.

  • March 2003
    • CarderPlanet don, Vega (aka Boa/Roman Stepanenko/Randy Riolta/RioRita) was arrested in Cyprus and extradited to the U.S.
    • U.S. Secret Service
  • October 2004
    • 28 criminals involved in CarderPlanet and similar networks were arrested (21 in the U.S. and 7 in 6 different countries)
    • U.S. Secret Service and partners
  • July 2005
    • CarderPlanet founder, Golubov (aka Script), was arrested
    • U.S. Secret Service and Ukrainian authorities
  • August 2007
    • Maksym Yastremskiy (aka Maksik) was arrested in Turkey
    • U.S. Secret Service and Turkish authorities
  • January 2009
    • CarderPlanet don, Vega, pleaded guilty
    • U.S. Secret Service
  • May 2009
  • 25 March 2010
    • Shadowcrew mastermind, Albert Gonzalez, was sentenced to 20 years in prison
    • U.S. Secret Service
  • 27 August 2010
    • CarderPlanet don, Horohorin (aka BadB), was arrested in France and extradited to the U.S.
    • U.S. Secret Service and French authorities

The Year of Data Breaches

2011

2011 was dubbed the "Year of Data Breaches," as the world witnessed organizations succumb to targeted breach attacks and lose what we call the new digital currency—information. The year was particularly challenging for the security industry, as several breached organizations soiled their reputations by losing confidential information and spending huge sums of money to fix damages. Victims like RSA and Sony PlayStation were left with no other choice but to publicly disclose facts about the attacks against their infrastructure so their customers could ensure proper mitigation.

  • 14 June 2011
    • Operation Firewall: Shadowcrew criminal, Aleksey Petrov Kolarov (aka APK), was sentenced to 30 months in prison
    • U.S. Secret Service and partners
  • November 2011
    • Suvorov pleaded guilty to other charges
    • U.S. Secret Service
  • 09 November 2011
    • Operation Ghostclick: Esthost/Rove Digital was taken down; Vladimir Tsastsin and 5 other Estonian criminals were arrested
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners

The Post-PC Era

2012

We declared 2012 the “post-PC era,” as cybercriminals started moving away from previously favored targets to focus instead on attacking Android™, social media platforms, and even Macs. It took Android devices less than three years to reach the volume of threats (led by premium service abusers and data stealers) that it took 14 years for PCs to reach. The question was no longer if a system would be breached, but when, as data breach and targeted attacks became the new norms.

  • 18 July 2012
    • Suvorov was sentenced to 7 years in prison
    • U.S. Secret Service

The Year of Online Banking Threats

2013

2013 was a challenging year for users worldwide, as refined online threats posed serious risks to their digital lives. Daily online banking and other financial transactions put users’ private information and wallets at great risk. Online banking malware like ZeuS/ZBOT took center stage in terms of scale. 2013 was also marred by threats like the Black Hole Exploit Kit, mobile malware, and the beginnings of ransomware like CryptoLocker.

  • 05 April 2013
    • CarderPlanet don, Horohorin, was sentenced to 88 months in prison
    • FBI and the U.S. Secret Service
  • 03 May 2013
    • SpyEye criminal, Hamza Bendellaj (aka Bx1), was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the U.S.
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 21 June 2013
  • 01 July 2013
  • 12 December 2013
    • CarderPlanet don, Vega, was sentenced to 18 years in prison
    • U.S. Secret Service

The Year of Cyberattacks

2014

2014 showed just how destructive cyberattacks could be to individuals and companies alike. Substantive financial losses and irreparable reputation damage ran rampant. The severity of attacks and their effects revealed one thing—the risk of becoming the next cyberattack victim has intensified. Massive data breaches were aided by point-of-sale (PoS) RAM scrapers. Vulnerability exploit attacks targeting Heartbleed and Shellshock prominently figured as well. Much to the world’s detriment, established processes like two-factor authentication (2FA) also proved susceptible to threats, as evidenced by Operation Emmental.

  • 29 January 2014
    • SpyEye criminal, Panin, pleaded guilty
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 22 May 2014
    • SpyEye accomplice, James Bayliss (aka jam3s), was arrested in the U.K.
    • U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) and Trend Micro

The Year of Big Botnet Busts

2015

2015 was a great year for the good guys, as it was marked by several successful global takedown and cybercriminal arrest activities. The takedown of long-standing botnets—Beebone/AAEH, SIMDA, Bugat/Cridex/Dridex—and criminal enterprises—Esthost/Rove Digital and reFUD.me—proved that cybercriminals were not above the law. Though tried-and-tested threats (zero-day exploits and malvertising tools like Superfish) continued to attack the simplest of blind spots that left individuals and organizations exposed, public-private partnerships (PPPs) between law enforcement agencies and security practitioners remained steadfast in keeping the world cybersecure.

  • 18 April 2015
  • 06 July 2015
  • 08 July 2015
    • Esthost/Rove Digital criminal, Tsastsin, was sentenced to 87 months in prison
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 13 October 2015
    • Bugat/Cridex/Dridex Botnet was taken down and criminal, Andrey Ghinkul (aka Andrei Ghincul or Smilex) was arrested
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 23 November 2015

The Year of Digital Extortion

2016

2016 was an unprecedented year for cybersecurity in the enterprise space. It was indeed the year of online extortion, with ransomware leading the charge. Business email compromise (BEC) likewise raked in huge profits for cybercriminals while proving that social engineering was still very effective. Vulnerabilities in widely used platforms, including Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, also surpassed volume records. 2016 was also marred by the biggest reported data breach in history while other organizations felt the effects of poor Internet of Things (IoT) security ushered in by the Mirai botnet attack.

  • 12 April 2016
  • 20 April 2016
    • SpyEye creators, Panin and Bendelladj, were sentenced to a combined 24 years and 6 months in prison
    • FBI with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 05 July 2016
  • 01 August 2016
    • BEC scam mastermind, "Mike," was arrested
    • INTERPOL with Trend Micro and other partners
  • 25 August 2016
    • Notorious PoS device hacker, Seleznev, was found guilty of charges
    • U.S. Secret Service and partners

The Year of Global Ransomware Outbreaks

2017

2017 saw massive ransomware outbreaks turn into global events that cost enterprises billions of dollars. Familiar threats like BEC scams continued to be a consistent danger for enterprises as well. In addition, volatile cryptocurrencies disrupted the threat landscape, as their value steeply and quickly rose. To function, cybercriminals reworked old techniques to take advantage of the cryptotrends and tried to exploit known vulnerabilities in new ways.

The Current Reality

2018

In 2018, digital extortion will be at the core of most cybercriminals’ business model. IoT device vulnerabilities will expand the attack surface along with smart environments. BEC scams will ensnare more organizations into forking over their money. The age of fake news and cyberpropaganda will persist with tried-and-tested cybercriminal techniques. Machine learning and blockchain applications will pose both promises and pitfalls. Companies will face the challenge of keeping up with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) directives. Not only will enterprises be riddled with vulnerabilities, but loopholes in internal processes will also be abused for production sabotage.

  • 15 January 2018
    • reFUD.me and Cryptex Reborn/Lite author, Esteves, pleaded guilty
    • U.K. NCA and Trend Micro
  • 15 February 2018
    • reFUD.me and Cryptex Reborn/Lite author, Esteves, was sentenced to 2 years in prison
    • U.K. NCA and Trend Micro
  • 13 March 2018
    • Scan4you criminal, Martisevs, pleaded guilty
    • FBI and Trend Micro
  • 16 May 2018
    • Scan4you criminal, Bondars, was found guilty
    • FBI and Trend Micro
  • 21 September 2018
    • Scan4You criminal, Bondars, was sentenced to 14 years in prison
    • FBI and Trend Micro

Photo credits: Gonzales | Stephen Watt; Golubov, Vega, Horohorin, Kolarov, and Seleznev | U.S. Secret Service CID; Suvorov | www.amicusint.org; Tsastsin | Trend Micro FTR