Symantec recently hosted Government Security News editor-in-chief Jacob Goodwin on a "Black Market Tour" that demonstrates how information is stolen and sold by hackers throughout the world. As Goodwin mentions in his story, Symantec has received a terrific reception for this educational exhibit which has toured Toronto, New York City, Washington, Tokyo, London and Mountain View, CA. Goodwin's take?
"The Black Market Tour attempts to recreate a hacker's "lair," where the evil-doer might use phishing software to fool victims into allowing key-logging software to track their computer's keystrokes. The hacker might then grab their victims' account numbers, passwords, security codes and the answers to a slew of security questions, all in an effort to assemble marketable "personal identities" which can be sold in bundles to nefarious buyers via the Internet.
Another portion of the tour presents on flat-screen monitors precisely the type of online chat-room dialogue that criminal sellers of personal data and criminal buyers of this data might engage in when they first meet each other, before adjourning to more-private conversations elsewhere on the Internet to consummate their illegal transactions."