FBI uses forum to catch cyber criminals.
With the number of hackers and fraudsters increasing and posing a threat for online users, FBI took the responsibility to punish them. And how they did it was by collecting information about hackers, a method that is often used by the hackers themselves to spoof information from genuine users.
The FBI launched a forum www.darkmarket.ws that captured the details of thousands of hackers and spammers online. Many ID thieves and hackers had been using DarkMarket as a forum to share details of victims and tips, however the whole forum was secretly run by a federal cybercrime agent for two years. J. Keith Mularski was the FBI agent who was managing the forum. He is a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh. The forum has been voluntarily closed earlier this month after running for just under two years, the reason given was that the forum was ‘attracting too much information’.
This forum was uncovered by the German radio station Südwestrundfunk. It indicated that FBI used DarkMarket to build ‘intelligence briefs’ on its members, complete with their internet IP addresses and details of their activities on the site.
Security companies understand the importance of applying brakes to the increasing activities of spammers. Hence it has been managing various activities like the one carried out by FBI. Also in 2004, the Secret Service ran a similar scheme on the crime board ShadowCrew.
