An Introduction to Hacking and Crimeware

CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND

The software that is used to disrupt, steal, or manipulate is often referred to as malware, crimeware, or hackware. In this pocket guide these terms will be used interchangeably.

In recent years there has been an influx of commercially available “attack toolkits” to help wannabe hackers create and propagate their own malware without much technical knowledge of computer programming. The underground environment promotes entrepreneurship and allows buyers to subscribe to attack services or buy attack toolkits in bulk, using online shopping carts and paying via Western Union and PayPal.⁶

Attack toolkits are usually bundles of software libraries that can be used to put together an attack application. The pre-written code in these ...