Cybercrime as a service: a very modern business

Cybercrime has continued to evolve and today it exists in a highly organised form. It has itself become big business, and as with all emerging markets, the suppliers and vendors that serve the cybercrime market have expanded their offer to encompass a range of activities. Cybercrime has evolved into a complex, highly organised hierarchy involving leaders, engineers, infantry, and hired money mules and a worrying new phrase has entered the lexicon of cybercrime – Crime as a Service (CaaS). Derek Manky of FortiGuard Labs examines how the cybercrime world has matured into big business. In any discussion on cybercrime and its evolution it's worth briefly reminding ourselves of its history. Of course cybercrime is nothing new. Since the earliest days of the computerisation of phone systems, people probed and sought ways of manipulating those systems for personal benefit – albeit only for the reward of free calls. As computerisation increasingly integrated into more areas of life, cybercrime developed in parallel, driven by those prepared to put in the hours into cracking the system.