14 DAY TRIAL // Criminals have found out that using hacking to sabotage law enforcers is quite an efficient tactic. It's not the first time something like this happens, but it's a first for anti-money laundering website, Bobbear. The British site had been built to inform the community about websites used for cyber-crime, stealing money, to be more exact!
Now, how do hackers actually help money laundering? Well, they don't do it directly, but in a more subtle way. They have attacked Bobbear's reputation - no one is going to listen to warning from a site with no credibility, right? Sophos intercepted a torrent of spam that attempts to tarnish Bobbear's reputation by asking for money to be donated to the website.
"Clearly the good people at Bobbear have upset the bad guys. The criminals have retaliated by trying to smear the website by sending spam in Bobbear's name and asking for donations. Clearly innocent people might be tempted into contributing in the fight against internet child abuse and money laundering, but the only pockets they would be filling belong to the criminals themselves. Bobbear makes clear on its website that it never sends spam and never asks for donations," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "It's a dirty trick by the cybercriminals to try and undermine an organization that is actually trying to do something positive to make the internet a safer place. All email users need to learn to be suspicious of unsolicited emails and not take everything they read at face value."
Bob Harrison, administrator of Bobbear, said: "I'm grateful to Sophos for their support in this incident. The website Bobbear.co.uk exists to publicise criminal fraud on the internet, to fight criminal fraud on the internet, to offer victim support and to offer a one-stop website for evidential data on the major frauds as an aid to abuse reporting. It also offers information on zombie botnet construction and abuse reporting techniques. The whole ethos of the site is that it is purely voluntary and does not accept donations. The fact that criminals have chosen to attack the site shows we must be doing something right."
So, as you can see, with our world evolving, so is crime, and criminal gangs now have many "tentacles" each one with a separate attribute! If some part of a gang is destined to only, say, steal money, it appears that now they've also got guys thwarting law enforcers' efforts!