If you get fascinated with the cybercrime supply chain, it's never a solo hacker doing

the whole thing.

There's a lot of layers to this onion.

So, let's say a hacker breaks into a place and stills a bunch of information from some

company.

Well, next he'll typically want to sell that data to make some money and do it again.

So, now you've got to find a buyer.

But before we even get to the buyer of stolen data, there's sometimes brokers involved.

People who have negotiated deals between hackers and buyers.

So, you might go to one of these brokers, offer a percentage for selling the database

to someone.

Now it's on them to find someone.

But when the broker finds a buyer, sometimes one side doesn't trust the other.

So they bring an entrusted third party, an underground escrow agent, if you will.

Who will wait for both the cash and the database and then make the trade?

Okay, but then what does the buyer do with this database dump?

Well, if it's full of email addresses, they might use it to send spam to people.

But of course, the spammer isn't selling anything themselves.

They're typically promoting someone else's business, a porn website, or a pharmacy.

And it's just fascinating for me to think about that sometimes.

It's never about the data breach itself.

But what happens to that data after it's stolen?

...