And Zhang is neither a thief nor an otaku. He prefers to call himself a businessman rather than a hacker.
As a successful "businessman", it took only three years for Zhang to go from grassroots to millions.
"In fact, we are no different from ordinary Internet service providers. We are all committed to using innovative technologies and products to meet the needs of users. " The user demand mentioned by Zhang actually refers to the demand of black players, and it is a strong demand.
Demand means opportunities abound. Based on some experiences in his early years, Zhang understands that the basic operation modes of all black production activities-black ash industry are varied, and resources are always indispensable as the bottom support. IP address is an indispensable resource.
The business scope and scale of black IP far exceed people's imagination, and it has long been entrenched in the underground market with its huge demand effect. Among them, there are not a few gold diggers who are good at digging the bottom demand like Zhang. The real land of gold diggers is to establish supply above the source and order in the wilderness.
Today, waterproof walls trace their roots. Through in-depth investigation and analysis of black market monitoring data, focus on the key figure "Zhang" and his powerful team, and truly restore the face and order of a black market demand industry.
0 1, find the root
At the beginning of this year, Joe started to run a game studio, mainly selling high-level game accounts and practicing on his behalf. In order to make a profit, the studio needs to register a large number of game accounts. But Joe soon encountered a bottleneck-almost all games stipulate that only one account can be registered for the same IP in a short time.
Introduced by acquaintances in the circle, Joe found Zhang. The problem that gives Joe a headache seems simple to Zhang. Through the "second-dial dynamic IP service" provided by Zhang, the studio easily bypassed the IP decision-making strategy of the game, and the problem was solved.
In fact, there are not a few black-and-white practitioners who are stuck in the IP strategy of Internet vendors like Joe. At present, IP determination is one of the most basic security strategies in Internet account system. Here are some examples:
A water army organization is employed by a public relations company and needs to post a lot on major social platforms. However, most social networking sites stipulate that 1 minute, the posting times of the same IP cannot exceed 3 times.
A pirated comic studio wants to grab exclusive comics from an animation website in batches, but because the copyright authorization is limited to Taiwan Province province in China, the website restricts IP access to these comics in Taiwan Province province.
A wool gang plans to attack the annual marketing activities of an e-commerce, but in order to prevent malicious vouchers, it is stipulated that the same IP can only participate in one coupon collection activity.
In the end, all malicious activities are inseparable from the support of the underlying resources after industrialization. Obtaining a large number of IP resources or specific ownership is the primary demand of most black market practitioners. And Lao Zhang's business-second dial dynamic IP business, is to meet this demand.
In recent years, the redistribution of IP resources driven by strong demand has become a refined link in the black production chain, and the second-dial IP black production that specializes in providing IP resources came into being. Lao Zhang has long been aiming at the just-needed market of IP resources, and has been digging deep, expanding and deforming, becoming one of the most upstream suppliers of the underground industrial chain.
Second-dial dynamic IP technology, of course, is not a hacker's weapon to destroy the city and pull out the village, but it provides basic support for more than 80% activities in the underground world, including bonus hunter, reptiles, fraud, group control, hanging up, game practice, library collision, computer brushing and so on. By dialing IP every second, black producers can quickly change IP or specify IP ownership, bypass the restrictions of time, region and times, directly penetrate the IP security strategy of the industry, and extend their sharp teeth to various Internet services.
02, looking for traces
Tan was originally an unemployed person, who was active in major black production groups all the year round and had many wild ways. Three years ago, Zhang met Tan in a resource exchange group, and the two hit it off and started a business of reselling IP resources in partnership.
At the beginning of "entrepreneurship", Lao Zhang paid a lot of money to be the boss of the company; Tan undertook the heavy responsibility of resource procurement, mainly to buy IP resources from operators and cloud service providers all over the country, that is, to "purchase goods" for the company. Later, a team of seven people was formed one after another, each with his own duties, like a serious network technology company.
After finding out the way, Zhang led the team to build a two-dial dynamic IP cluster systematically, bundling and integrating a variety of network IP resources, and then integrating several different products according to different functions such as secondary IP switching, hidden IP, VPN and group control, and hanging them on the website for daily rent, weekly rent and monthly rent. The business is getting bigger and bigger, and the IP resource pool is also expanding. The company's website even hangs a high-profile signboard of "IP number industryNo. 1".
Riding the east wind of the downstream black production development, Lao Zhang's platform has risen rapidly in the past two or three years. Today, the cumulative number of users of the platform has reached 1.5 million, and the number of daily users is nearly 50,000—that is to say, every day, 50,000 black-producing practitioners get indispensable IP resources from Lao Zhang, which in turn sucks up the fat of Internet business and makes profits.
The waterproof wall found that the profit model of the bottom market is very clear-after mastering the most basic resources, you can absorb the profits of the upper black production upwards. The further development of upper-level black production, in turn, has improved the value of basic resources. In the past three years, the profit of IP products in the black market has doubled. With a larger resource pool and various sophisticated IP integration products, Lao Zhang's gang now has an annual income of180,000+and a profit margin of 260%. Take one of the monitored IP switching products as an example, its annual sales volume has reached the order of one million, and it is still rising.
03, darkness
I have been in the black production circle for a long time, and naturally I have accumulated a lot of word of mouth and regular customers. With these relationships, Zhang's team started the "personal tailor" service.
The "personal tailor" here refers to customizing IP-related services for different Internet business models according to different customer needs, such as capturing social account information, saving the number of mobile game studios, and registering e-commerce accounts in batches.
But these dark things are hard to find on the website. According to the tracing and excavation of the waterproof wall, all transactions are private contacts, and public platforms are not taken, so that all customized services are quietly carried out in private circles. After being introduced to the service circle of private tailors by "acquaintances", we found that the price of each customized service starts from 50,000 yuan, and there is no upper limit on the price-this part of the business hidden under the table is really the big income of Lao Zhang Company. The second IP gang headed by Lao Zhang has a wide range of business. * * * Provide customized services for more than 800 Internet companies, mainly social and game businesses.
The more convenient and simple it is to obtain resources, the lower the attack threshold of cyber piracy, and the greater the threat to Internet business. The factions in front, such as the wool party, the ticket brushing party, and the hanging party, together with the logistics gangs that continuously provide IP resources and services in the rear, form a seamless dark industrial chain, eroding the interests of Internet vendors.
04. Distribution
With the development of the domestic Internet industry for more than 20 years, the gold diggers in the black market have been sitting on their hands and sharing huge profits, attracting wave after wave of profit-seekers.
However, the new players are gearing up and looking around, only to find that the old players have long been king of mountains, and there is really no need to open up territory. The most convenient way to get a piece of the action is to choose "Join" and become the subordinate agent of the old player.
"With an open concept, enjoy resources and technology, so that partners can get rich returns." What Zhang said so grandiose is actually a "distribution model" that has sprung up suddenly in the black industry-the general agent provides the integrated technology and products of the second dial IP to the lower agents, and the lower agents sell them, or continue to develop agents. Among them, the monthly sales of first-class agents range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Agents at all levels return 22%~33% of sales every month, and the amount of return ranges from several thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.
According to the tracking of waterproof wall, up to now, the "super generation" led by Zhang has reached level 3, and the number of agents is nearly 200. As a result, this "businessman" who mastered millions of black production resources stood at the top of the pyramid and was in charge of his small empire of resource distribution. Agents at all levels are scattered everywhere, attracting customers and gathering together endlessly. By developing the distribution model, Lao Zhang ambitiously occupied a bigger cake in the IP supply market.
05, thinking
Zhang's story is just a microcosm of the demand market at the bottom of the black market. His family history can be written as a secret Jianghu story.
We all like Jianghu stories, and we are also in this Jianghu. Digging deep into the Internet black production circle for more than ten years, the waterproof wall witnessed the rapid transformation of several Internet outlets, witnessed the battle for resources and traffic in the industry, witnessed the germination, development, prosperity and decline of various black ash industries, and the transformation of the industrial chain.
Long-term research on the evil mode and interest chain of black goods shows that there is a great similarity in the attack activities of black goods-the whole process has a complete life cycle from the appearance of an attack form to the evolution of a mature industrial link, and then the attack reaches the victim.
Then, if we can fully perceive and firmly grasp every critical path of the attack from the attack gestation stage to the attack initiation stage and then to the liquidation end stage, and grasp the information of personnel, interpersonal, behavior, equipment, resources, traffic and tactics involved in each link of the attack, we can block the source, break the chain and attack in advance. Based on this concept of confrontation, what we see is not how many times we have been attacked, but who is staring at us, who is going to attack us, and which paths the attack will come from. ...
Take the second-dial IP hacking attack as an example. We take the attacker and the key resources used as the starting point, trace the source from the gestation stage of the attack, reach the defense frontier of the attacked party before the attacker, and block and intercept the key resources used by the attacker, instead of intercepting the attack itself when the attack arrives. In this way, confrontation can form a situation in which the enemy takes control first and then attacks us. This is the value of threat intelligence perception.
Reveal the black production and gray production projects and cultivate your divergent thinking.
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This article was edited and published by Singularity Network.
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