Herein lies the story of a botnet herder. I find these sorts of stories far more interesting than vague reports on data disclosures, akin to the difference between cheesecake and rice cakes.
We thankfully have a few trends available to us that help keep these threats in check. Greed, arrogance, stupidity. While some criminals make stupid mistakes out of their pursuit of money, there are many others who are more savvy than to be obvious and brazen with their tradecraft. I guess in another lifetime if I wanted to be a cyber criminal, I would follow a few non-technical steps:
those sound like good rules of thumb for conventional criminal enterprises as well…
Absolutely!