University of South Carolina

MATH 111INTRODUCTION
Carding shouldn’t be something you do for fun, it is something you do to survive.
Financially motivated hackers consider hacking and carding as their career. The employment
opportunities are in their home countries, particularly those whose salaries are enough to pay for the
life styles these individuals have become accustomed, are extremely limited. They come from a
society where the average pay is $200 per month but Internet connectivity costs $40 per month.
Thus they are willing to spend one fifth of their monthly salary to be online. A $1000 profit is more
money then most Eastern European hackers have ever seen at one time.
Though they understand the process of credit cards, most International hackers do not understand
the impact of committing credit card fraud. Most come from cash economies and the use of a credit
card by regular citizens is extremely uncommon. They feel the attack is directed at a big corporation
and not an individual. The idea of rising interest rates, chargeback fees or economic instability are
not concepts they can understand nor are they their concern. Money is the object of their actions.
At the time of the first version of this paper in August 2003, many financially motivated hackers
could be found chatting in the forums of the web sites carderplanet.com, shadowcrew.com and/or
darkprofits.com. These sites are still referenced in this paper because the information provided on
the sites are still relevant.
Since that time, many of the referenced sites have been shutdown or taken over by script-kiddies
and the real profiteers have moved deeper underground. Many have also become allied with
organized crime groups or created their own hacking teams.
Also at the time of original publication, EFnet and DALnet on IRC initiated a crackdown on
channels dedicated to cyber crime. Since that time, the criminals have found loop holes in the
crackdown, such as renaming the groups, attaching messages of the day (MOTD)forbidding
criminal activity or making the channels private. Many of the channels have also gone native;
meaning they are dedicated to a particular language group and all posts to the channel utilize