Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Proceedings of Botconf 2021/2022
Conference proceedings

Private Clubs For Hackers: How Private Forums Shape The Malware Market

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  • Renaud Zbinden,
  • Sandra Langel,
  • Olivier Beaudet-Labrecque,
  • David Décary-Hétu,
  • Luca Brunoni
Renaud Zbinden
Institut de lutte contre la criminalité économique
Sandra Langel
Institut de lutte contre la criminalité économique
Olivier Beaudet-Labrecque
Institut de lutte contre la criminalité économique
David Décary-Hétu
Université de Montréal
Luca Brunoni
Institut de lutte contre la criminalité économique

Published 2022-10-04

Keywords

  • Malware,
  • Discussion forum,
  • Hacking

Copyright (c) 2024 Renaud Zbinden, Sandra Langel, Olivier Beaudet-Labrecque, David Décary-Hétu, Luca Brunoni (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Zbinden, R., Langel, S., Beaudet-Labrecque, O., Décary-Hétu, D., & Brunoni, L. (2022). Private Clubs For Hackers: How Private Forums Shape The Malware Market. The Journal on Cybercrime and Digital Investigations, 7(1), 22-34. https://doi.org/10.18464/cybin.v7i1.36

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Abstract

Offenders seek online private discussion forums where participants are screened before gaining access to connect with sophisticated peers and evade detection. Past research finds that most public discussion forum participants have a low level of technical skill and rely on more established participants for the tools and techniques they need to commit their offences. To date, research has mostly focused on public discussion forums of online offenders as gaining access to private forums comes with many challenges. The aim of this research is to describe and understand the impacts of the private nature of discussion forums on their participants’ activities. Our driving hypothesis is that private discussion forums are host to more sophisticated participants that will, in turn, offer and have access to more sophisticated tools. To understand the impacts of the private nature of discussion forums, we selected two discussion forums available on the internet whose focus is the sale of malware; one of them is private, while the other is public. Our analysis suggests that while there are differences between private and public discussion forums, there are few significant differences between both inters of the products they advertise.

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