Take advantage of an employee. Often this is the easiest way to get hold of information which could be left open due to negligence or even rogue ones who are willing to sell information. Poorly protected back-end servers? You can probably find many other ways to find data.
Three - Malware and trojans
Trojan technology
This is for the harvester fraudsters out there those who want to get their hands dirty with the tech and steal personal information direct from the consumer.
Trojans are invisible, and you can get these on anybody's computer without them being aware of it. They'll collect information everything that you do online, and deliver it to the trojan operator.
One of the more common ways to get a trojan on a computer at present is a blend of phishing and trojan attack. Users will often receive an email which takes you to a fake website which is playing a video which freezes.
It will then ask you to run an application which will enable you to run the video. Once you click on the application hey presto! You've got a trojan on somebody's machine. In some cases you won't have to get the user to click on the application prompt they'll be automatically infected.
Crimeware
Cash-out fraudsters will be interested in buying a ready-made trojan because instead of fiddling around with the technology, all you need is to purchase one, leave it running, and collect data at your leisure.
The price of malware and trojans is dropping. A good example is Zeus, a dangerous and effective trojan which has the ability to do many nasty things and is available for about $700 to $1000.
There are infection kits, building your own botnet kits, as well as beginner' trojans which you can practice with for less money.
If you are going to go for the technical route then you will have to deal with several factors you'll need to find hosting servers, install the botnet on machines, install SQL databases, encryption packages as well as other components.
You'll also have to deal with anti-virus companies sending out signatures against your trojans which means additional builds and upgrades. You'll need to make new patches as well. You'll also need knowledge of how to do the actual infection of all the computers.
