Economics

Nowadays, the rapid development of the Internet has given rise to a global murky underground business, which is called the hacker economy industry. Numerous individuals and companies have become victims of the industry. In essence, the leakage of user information which facilitates the operation of the industry is the chief culprit. Hackers all over the world have invented hundreds and thousands of sophisticated schemes to obtain user information. Once user information is obtained, a full utilization of it will be performed by hackers until ultimately, the value of it is drained out. In order to present a general picture of the hacker economy industry, we in this paper perform a detailed analysis of websites, malware, hackers, and users. In addition, we elaborate the operations and the structure of the hacker economy industry. Lastly, we point out the direction of possible countermeasures for guarding user information which facilitates a further in-depth study and present a case study to illustrate our work