It’s like General Assembly, but for criminals.
CNET reports that a six-week seminar has been developed for budding miscreants to learn the crafts of digital thievery, including how to buy stolen credit cards, or work on specific industries like flights and hotels.
“You will learn to have a free holiday at the resorts of Europe, America and Asia,” one advertisement reportedly reads — for now, the courses are offered only in Russian.
The details about the crash course come from Digital Shadows, a UK-based cybersecurity firm that enrolled in WWH-Club’s $745 course to learn more about the this fraud-filled corner of the internet. They found that the 20 lecture curriculum, five instructors, required reading and quizzes were the most extensive they’d seen yet.
“It’s on a scale that [we] haven’t seen before, and they refresh the course material every six months,” Rick Holland, Digital Shadows’ vice president of strategy, told CNET.
Holland said that the course should serve as a reminder that consumers need to protect themselves — and reveals how easy it is to become a professional fraudster.
“You could know nothing and it ramps you up on understanding the different kinds of cards that are out there, the security measures that are out there, what do you need on your computer,” Holland said.
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