Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Lusthaus: Cybercriminals maximize profits by structuring themselves like traditional business firms

Jonathan Lusthaus · a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime · Feb 26, 2019 · at 4:30

Jonathan Lusthaus, cybercrime researcher, discusses how modern cybercrime syndicates have evolved from lone actors into organized, firm-like entities with specialized labor.

0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And in some cases, these groups look a lot like firms, whether it's a venture capitalist firm, whether it's people selling various products. For criminals, actually, and for cyber criminals, they're also employing a similar structure, which is to have a team of people. Some have different skill sets from each other. There's usually someone with some organizational capability, and they're going to perform the role of a business because that's how they can maximize their profits as well, by bringing people together in a kind of unified endeavor.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Jonathan Lusthaus

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lusthaus: Former Soviet states dominate underground malware coding and development
“So, basically, if we think about sort of former Soviet Union states, they're very well known for the more technical aspects of cybercrime. So, these are primarily the cybercriminals from here are the ones who are responsible for actually coding the malware, fo…”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 9:37 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Insight
Lusthaus: Eastern European tech graduates enter cybercrime due to capital shortages
“What we're seeing is a massive pool of very, very talented people who are highly educated, actually, have an excellent university system. These are people with, you know, degrees in math, science, technology, Engineering. And what's happening is they're coming…”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 14:50 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Assertion Supported
Lusthaus: Cybercrime entities operate out of physical office spaces like tech firms
“And in some cases we see people operating out of physical office space, and they really begin to look like technology companies, and actually they are technology companies, they're just criminal ones.”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 7:16 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lusthaus: Multiple Eastern European cybercriminals have politically connected parents
“I found actually more than a handful of people who were involved in cybercrime in parts of Eastern Europe actually had parents who are very influential people, whether they were law enforcement agents, whether they were political figures.”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 18:40 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Assertion Supported
Lusthaus: LA Street Gangs Converted Prostitution Networks into Credit Card Fraud Schemes
“One of the most interesting ones I think I encountered was examples of street gangs in LA who basically were traditionally running prostitution operations, but what they would do was from time to time convert these operations into a cashing out scheme. So they…”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 20:51 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Insight
Lusthaus: Cybercrime vendors absorb risk by keeping fixed online brands
“But on the other extreme, you get certain cyber criminals who will change their names very regularly. So you might see this particularly around very high level Russian speaking malware coders. So people who are really the top layer of the industry Obviously, I…”
Jonathan Lusthaus Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 27:16 a16z Podcast | The Business of Cybercrime
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.