In some countries that are absolutely poor, it is entirely common to have the local mob recruiter look for young talented kids that they can bring into their or

In some countries that are absolutely poor, it is entirely common to have the local mob recruiter look for young talented kids that they can bring into their organization. They make them an offer when the kids are out begging for change or something like "we'll take care of your mom and make sure she doesn't break her legs if you come and get an education in our school, we might even pay you." The youngster ends up in basically a run-down warehouse full of other kids each taught how to look for basic exploits like mysql injection or use root kits, and they sit around and do this all day. This is why some countries are typically COEs for hacking, such as Russia with crimeware kits, and until recently Brazil for bank hacking. This is also why you need coordinated efforts of special agents armed with assault rifles to clean out some spam-mills sometimes (they're taking them away from some mob). What I've described is a bit outmoded, typically this behavior is turning into other things such as this: http://abh-news.com/cybercrime-china-hackers-training-camp-closed-866.html http://abh-news.com/cybercrime-china-hackers-training-camp-c... as well as the makers of exploit scripts are just getting better and recruiting these kids doesn't make sense any more... you can intelligently scan for millions of sites using phpmyadmin and automatically run your exploit with it. As with any crime you find the trends all over the map: not all robberies are mob related, not all of them aren't, some of them are more elaborate than others, etc.