Using PieSpy to Monitor Scammers

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has an interesting report on how researchers and investigators can use the free PieSpy bot to graphically map relationships between scammers.

I've used this nifty little program on several occasions to map some of the more heavily-used IRC fraud forums, most recently a very popular one known as "ccpower" (the "cc" stands for credit cards). In the image to the right you can see a number of users communicating with one another, with the darker blue lines indicating stronger (more frequent) relationships. Interestingly, two of the individuals near the center of the diagram, "Ccards" and a user named "the," switched places after several hours, suggesting one had handed control over the channel to the other after some time.