New research presented during Black Hat 2021 in Las Vegas on Wednesday reveals the important role of amateur, and amateurish, players in sustaining the cybercrime ecosystem.

The cybercrime underground is often portrayed as driven by a small number of highly motivated and capable actors with criminal intent — bot herders, ransomware masterminds and spy chiefs. But new research suggests it is sustained by a huge penumbra of individuals simply trying to earn a living off the internet — a portion of whom over time drift into criminal activity.

“What we conclude from our analysis is that there is a large informal workforce evolving at the periphery of the malware industry that is necessary to its operation,” Masarah Paquet-Clouston, a security researcher for GoSecure, told a virtual session at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas Wednesday.

She compared these “drifters,” moving from the informal economy to the cybercrime ecosystem, to the street level dealers and enforcers — often drug addicts themselves — who make the operations of transnational drug cartels possible. “They’re not the masterminds behind … the cartels. But if we take them off the streets, maybe we can tackle the [drug] problem differently,” she said.

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Phishing schemes, malware campaigns and other operations involve an array of workers beyond the criminal masterminds. Could giving them better opportunities for legitimate work help cut crime?

Security researchers have put the spotlight on a little-known but growing group of people who make up a significant part of the cyber-criminal ecosystem, even though some of them may not even be aware that they’re actually taking part in illegal activities.

A collaborative research project by Czech Technical University in Prague, plus cybersecurity companies GoSecure and SecureWorks, analyzed the activities of people on the fringes of cybercrime, those behind projects like building the websites that end up being used for phishing attacks, affiliate schemes to drive traffic towards compromised or fake websites or writing the code that ends up in malware.

The people behind these projects are doing it because it’s an easy way to make money. But by doing this work, they’re laying the foundations for cyber criminals to carry out malicious campaigns

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Think of a cybercriminal. Let’s call the cybercriminal Kelsey.

Does Kelsey think about being a criminal? Does Kelsey think it’s cool? Does Kelsey have a novelty license plate that says HACK CAR?

Now think about a clerk at a grocery store or whoever it is who writes greeting cards, or someone else with an average job. Let’s call the normal worker Alex. Is the clerk in it for the love of the groceries? Does the greeting card writer genuinely care whose birthday it is? Is Alex more interested in what the job is or is Alex just showing up to work to get a paycheck?

Cybercrime is not all Kelsey. Cybercrime is mostly Alex. At least, that is the finding of a research team from GoSecure, Secureworks, the Czech Technical University in Prague and Cisco.

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