What Happens When Authorities Use Criminal Methods

It appears that researchers at Canegie Mellon are working on schemes to disrupt WaReZ, virus, and hacking markets.

One tactic involves bad mouthing buyers or sellers in order to eliminate their verified status, discouraging others from engaging in trades with them. The other attacks the effectiveness of the markets themselves by undermining the cybercrooks' verification or reputation system, creating a deceptive sales environment.

One technique developed by the team involves establishing fake verified-status identities that are difficult to distinguish from other-verified status sellers, making it hard for buyers to identify "honest" verified-status sellers from "dishonest" verified-status sellers.

"Just like you need to verify that individuals are honest on eBay, online criminals need to verify that they are dealing with 'honest' criminals," explained Jason Franklin, a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon.

Ummmm....You want to develop this stuff, and you don't expect it to fall into the hands of the black hats?

You know, the guys who have compromised a few million network computers that could be used for password cracks to infiltrate a place like eBay?

This is a one-D-ten-T problem (spell it out with the numbers).