To many, IRC is simply a chat-based system where people get together and talk about anything and everything, but that is not the only thing that happens in these chat rooms.  Providing you know the names of the chat rooms, you can enter rooms where nothing is being talked about except business; transactions of stolen credit card information and various other identity-based information being sold to the highest bidder.  One thing that would be interesting is to see how many law-oriented users monitor these sessions on a daily basis…

I’m lurking on IRC - Internet Relay Chat - the place where lots of net users go to talk via typed text on any and every conceivable topic.

But instead of talking about games, last night’s big match or MP3s, I’m on channels with names like cc-visa, ccfull, ccpower and trade-cc.

I’m in bandit country.

The “cc” stands for “credit cards” and these are the virtual markets where thousands of stolen numbers are bought and sold all day, every day.

Card games

In most busy IRC discussion rooms, or channels, the threads of conversations are hard to follow because the typed text flies by so fast. It’s like going to a party and being told you can only chat to other people by texting them on your mobile phone.[more]

Tags: Hackers