Hackers Stole Your Credit Card? Robots Are On the Case

When a hacker steals your credit card number, email password or Social Security number, they know where to go to make use of it: a vast world of underground chat rooms and forums, where hackers buy and sell the data that gives them access to your money.

How can law enforcement even begin cracking into this enormous hacker network? Never fear: The robot informant is on the case.

CSIdentity, an Austin-based security firm, has created artificial intelligence software that poses as a hacker, interacts with members of these underground chat rooms and, if successful, solicits stolen data, which is then sent back to investigators.

Joe Ross, the president of CSIdentity, said the company’s analyst team designed the chatbots by analyzing the dialog in hacker chatrooms, paying close attention to patterns in the interactions and lingo.

The bots use “fuzzy pattern recognition” to keep up with the lightning-quick conversations. That way, they can make sense of words that are expressed in different ways. (Who knew that a “fullz” would refer to a stolen credit card number and security code?)

Unfortunately, hackers are already on to the game. They keep an eye out for chatters that seem … well, robotic … and will vacate a chatroom if one seems suspicious. However, that pushes companies like CSIdentity to up their efforts even more. And when confused, the bots can always fall back on a swear word to throw off hackers in a profanity-riddled forums.