Exposing China's vast underground economy

Colossal SMARTR Bombes to Boot for Sale set Sail on the Unholy Trinity of Open Rigged AI Markets

The report, however, stops short of investigating the more “high-tier aspects” of the underground economy such as trading of zero-day vulnerabilities or advanced persistent threat tools which it said are “likely to occur in even more hidden and secure communication channels between small groups with mutual trust”. .... Phil Muncaster [El Reg]

Methinks, Phil, one can also expect that trading of zero-day vulnerabilities and/or advanced persistent threat tools [to name but two lucrative entrepreneurial enterprises] are likely to occur in even more hidden and secure communication channels, as well as betatesting the explosive benefits of novel transparent hidden in plain text sight approaches to sensitive and disruptive/irregular and unconventional intelligence exchanges, in clearly enough cryptically encoded information exchanges and intelligence searches, both reliant upon and positively driven by a desirous continuous mutual trust and respect, between small groups of individuals and government leaders/department and ministerial heads and wannabe new world order elite power players and powerful smarter organisations, intent and able to make great changes with the new intelligent friends they have discovered who are metaphysically active in the Universal Virtual Field of Immaculately Resourced Assets.

The power within that sort of group, in control of the information and intelligence that they would be sharing, is beyond earthly compare, and a kernel which drivers innovation and creativity which the status quo can only dream of and wish was theirs to profit from and take control of, which is only a possibility and option should they, via their proxy agents probably, have generously funded it with flash electronic cash/bankers draft transfers, for that would be all that they can virtually offer and easily practically immediately deliver. Well, the smarter ones will be doing that most certainly, to try to ensure that they retain as much control on power as they can with the simple resources which they control.

"court room documents detailing high profile cases"...

... are of course accurate and impartial sources of numbers to do statistics on... not. They're almost per definition outliers, and as such much closer to anecdotes than to data. You also get much the same effect that inflated price report does for the drug market. Which perversely may entice more people into the market.

Inflating? Yes indeedy. You invariably get quoted some "street price" that may or may not have any connection to what the very end of the chain would've paid for it. But the bigger the catch, the lower the price per unit paid would've been. All those distributors down the line want a cut for their efforts, too. Now what happens when a bunch of miscreants with ten tonnes of stolen garlic get caught? The wholesale price gets quoted, not some made-up "street price". And that's bad statistics right there.

Real name policies

So you want to clamp down on "cybercrime" ("cyber" because you're the government), and so you instate a real-name policy, to, well, erm, make it harder for identity thieves and fences of their loot to hide behind made-up names and aliases.

Sounds good to me. Carry on government.

Another Pendant

Shouldn't this underground network actually be described as "Underworld"?

I'll hang on while someone answers.

Change YOur headline because it is

A more appropriate title for your article would reference cyber crime not the underground economy in such general terms.

Generally underground economy or informal economy or black market involves all economic activities that occurs outside of the generally formal and measurable economic framework. For example you selling a friend a used computer for cash or the arcade vendor who does not report their cash income or yes cyber criminals or drug dealing.

Ok in some places you did say Online Underground economy. But you really meant cyber crime because not all of the nline underground economy would be illegal activities. Any unreported economic activity that is not reflected in National Income statistice is underground or informal economy. If you mean cyber crime then say so

What make it the underground economy is less the fact that it is illegal and more the fact that by its very nature it is difficult if not impossible to measure.

In most underdeveloped economies like China, the underground economy is a significant proportion of total economic activity. This is one of the difficulty in comparing income between countries. Countries vary significantly in the proportion of total economic activity which the total published figure represents. . It is kinda difficult for Americans and other developed countries with their well developed taxation and income reporting systems to understand this.

Let there be Light ..... and there was Light and Edutainment and IntelAIgent Information Phorms

"Ok in some places you did say Online Underground economy. But you really meant cyber crime because not all of the nline underground economy would be illegal activities. Any unreported economic activity that is not reflected in National Income statistice is underground or informal economy. If you mean cyber crime then say so

What make it the underground economy is less the fact that it is illegal and more the fact that by its very nature it is difficult if not impossible to measure........ Anonymous Coward Posted Monday 20th August 2012 02:35 GMT

Methinks the prime gripe and lucrative bone of contention for government lackeys and traditional elite power brokers who would be into the buying and selling of governments and national secrets, is that it is also by its very nature difficult if not impossible to control and make exclusive amoral business profit from ..... which would ideally be that which disadvantages significantly all competition and any opposition.

Such then makes it, and the IT Services and Media Moguls which/who wields it, a fabulous weapon of mass enlightenment.

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