>> they're consuming economically important species >> we're offering something on our menu that no-one else is offering. >> i'm ali velshi on target tonight. invisible threat. we'll dive into the darkest corners of web where nobody knows your name and just about anyone goes, plus hackers taking the wheel as you drive. the internet made our lives more convenient than ever, hackers twisted the internet into a weapon testing the security of individuals, companies and nations. we know about the millions of counter and former u.s. federal

workers whose personal information including social security numbers was stone over the summer during a cyber attack. and who can forget the hack that north korea is accused of launching against sony because it was offended by the movie "the interview." hundreds of companies, home deo, neiman mark, and others victims of hackers. cyber crime cost the global economy as much as $575 billion. juniper research forecast by 2020, the cost of worldwide criminal data breaches will quadruple to 2.5 trillion. the reason for the scary forecast is clear. more of the data the world relies on is moving online, making us vulnerable to hackers that want to scam, spy and steal. when it comes to stealing from american consumers and

businesses, credit cards are the key. americans have 1.2 billion credit and debit cards. credit and debit card fraud costs $6.2 billion. moneys they steal your credit card number, hackers that pose an invisible threat to privacy and security turn to something called the dark web, or the deep web, a world most of us have never entered, but more of us understand. marie snow took a guided tour of the dark web to show how vulnerable we are. >> welcome to the underground chatrooms of the dark web, where personal information is bought and sold. not only do you have person's name, date of birth; you have their email addresses,

passwords, their ip address. their facebook profile. >> credit card, bank account. you could take over their financial life. >> reporter: how much is it worth? >> in this case, this person selling these for $8. >> for all that information on one person. it starts with wall street, deals made by crusader, viking - selling paypal, credit cards, ip addresses. >> it's like an ebay for stolen data. >> it's almost like a big bizarre. >> that's what it is. >> reporter: with a few key strokes they are traded as a result of hacks like those that took place in areas like neimans and others. >> how much is social security

worth. >> it would be worth as little as a couple of dollars. a credit cardy lone without social security is worth a dollar, maybe less. >> the former black cat hatter nose the value of a stolen identity and made thousands buying bank and credit card numbers and spending money before being caught by the secret service. how easy was it to do it? >> it was easy. anyone with a computer and limited knowledge can do it. >> it's not good news for $15 million that had information stolen in 2012. losses are nearly $25 billion. $10 billion more than losses from other property combined. making i.d. theft fast-growing crime, a crime we saw when they

were patrolling. >> are you saying it's $5 for a dump. i'd use it to encode cards. and we'll find out what banks he has and what the pricing is. >> within seconds we negotiated with viking, selling bank of america, wells fargo, chase and american express numbers. >> you are saying $500 for a $20,000 account. >> within six minutes. you pay $500, someone that has a $20,000 banks act lost it. >> how does he accept payment? >> he takes bitcoin. >> if he uses bitcoin, it would not be traced. >> reporter: bitcoin is faster and easier to transfer it. their's ways to make it

anonymous, making it a preferred transfer. >> with anonymous payments, chatrooms and web sints, it's stuff to know who you are dealing with. data shows that cyber crime activity comes from russia. james works with the department of state and commerce. he says that consumer protection is a foreign policy issue. the only russian hackers that have been caught are the ones dumb enough to take vacations outside of russia. >> if he's smart he'll go to sochi, stick to a russian beach. >> reporter: for this bike shop owner, it can be devastating. they lost $45,000 worth of bikes and gear, when police say this man and who others used stolen credit card number.

>> the instruction with three gentlemen is no different to anything we have done in the past. we've probably done 1,000 transactions, and it wouldn't go through. once it was approved. weld receive payment. >> reporter: in this case the person had used and formed new credit i.d.s. >> it's interesting when something like this happens. it sucks when it happens to me. >> it turned out taylor was not alone. the trio used stolen account information up and down the i 20 corridor in denver. >> i believe it was things they could get cash for at pawn shops with little efforts. >> consumers that had their credit cards stolen are not the only ones victimized. his employs manually entered account numbers when the

magnetic strips didn't work, visa will not reimburse for stolen merchandise. >> what we did wrong was a slip up that cost us several 10,000. >> we contacted several card companies about the buying and trading of credit carts on the dark web. visa said it couldn't comment on specific cases, but pointed to technologies called the ship and pin, expected to roll out. that they believe will make the credit card fraud harder to do. they don't see the protections having an effect on the black market any time soon. >> hackers are one step ahead. there's so much funny to be made. >> it's enticing to foreign hackers that feel there's little risk.

>> you'll not be mugged, they are not going to steal your car. it's a different crime. they'll sit in st. petersburg, they'll go into your bank account and take money next, how hackers can seize control of infrastructure, and wait till you see what they can do to your car while you're driving.

living in an increasingly wired world comes at a cost that is dangerous to ignore. we are more vulnerable to hackers. take an experiment volving a gene cherokee, driven by a reporter for wired magazine.

hackers managed to control the shield, and windshield wipers, by hacking into the you connect entertainment system. ultimately they disabled the breaks and transmission. the reporter was not hurt, and chrysler says the software is fixed that will prevent hacks of the vehicles. that illustrates the extent of the threat and targets at risk. ex-tinning from financial information to utilities that supply gas, oil and electricity that the world relies on. mary snow has the second parts of our series on the invisible threat of cyber crime. >> this is one of the web-based markets places on the dark web. this you can buy and sell anything. >> reporter: dan, a former black hat hacker took me on a tour of the dark web, starting in anonymous chatrooms. >> we are seeing the dumps, like magnetic strip data, social

security, driver's licence. people looking for credit card numbers. >> reporter: within minutes we were abled negotiate with someone for credit accounts. >> he said it was $5 for dump. we'll find out. >> an offer of payment is as far as he will go. there was a time he would have completed the deal and turned the credit card numbers into thousands of cash a day. >> it's definitely more than the money. easy money is great. the fact i could go to the store and get anything for free was a rush. >> reporter: a rush that fuelled cyber criminals and spies, crossing continents and borders, and turned consumer protection into foreign policy. making a game out of protecting rockets and infrastructure.

>> it's a cat and mouse game. the hackers are a step ahead. >> moving at the speed of light. they are frequent. destructive. moving from data breeches, to hacks on sony pictures, to an iranian attack on the sands casino, to russia's alleged hacking into sensitive emails from our own president and the recent breach at the office of management. >> from the first time we sa seen damaging cyber i tacks in the united states done for political purchases, this has never happened before. >> reporter: james is a cyber security expert, and said russia, china and iran have done reconnaissance on critical networks. that could lead to attacks like one at a german steal mill. a report shows the mill was hacked through bobby trapped emails, giving hackers access to

the system. part of the plant failed, including a furnace that could not be shut down as normal. >> the attack on the steal meal was interesting. there's a few countries in the world that have the capability to do this kind of attack, right. only a handful of countries could do something like that. but it is frightening, because they were able to get into the control systems for the steel mill and damage them, causing physical damage. this is an example of what a cyber attack could do if used by terrorists. >> reporter: cyber warfare can be conducted remotely and anonymous as demand. >> we didn't have a p.s.v., we caused is pipe rupture in the process. usingcm at u.s. gat facilities,

hackers showed how easy it was. causing the pipes to explode and overflow. >> for the demonstration it was filled with water. >> when the isolation volve is closed we should turn off the pump. >> it didn't happen. as an operator, you are locked out. >> there has been 79 hacking attacks against u.s. energy companies, investigated by the computer emergency team. a division of the department of homeland security. between april 2013 and 2014 hackers broke in 30% of energy companies, lending them to spend on cyber teams. >> it's a threat, one that the companies take seriously. i can tell you that the

facilities, they've built redundancy into the system. >> is it enough. experts say no. it relied on 1970 technologiesies. a study of more than 500 security chiefs from 26 member companies in the organization of american states found half saw an increase in cyber attacks over the past year. the report revealed that attackers tried to manipulate equipment through an industrial control system. we only have to think. air flights going down, black outs plunging cities into darkness. imagine what a set would do. this is a matter of public safety. a matter of public safety and foreign policy. >> the top 20 or 30 groups who are mainly russian speaking are

as good as the intelligence services or militaries of most governments around the world. these are great programmers, great mathematicians, people with immense skills, and they can make a lot of money with almost no risk. >> laura from the cyber security firm said with companies her team worked with, state sponsored hacking is to blame for the theft of intellectual property. >> in terms of sheer volume and economic long evidenty, i think that the chinese groups continued targetting towards economic data. >> it's the c.e.o.s email. it's the boardroom meetings discussing which projects get funded. >> without clear diplomacy in place, cyber borders are vulnerable and the cat and mouse game continues. next, digital crime scenes

do not have yellow tape around them. law enforcement is hard at work, finding criminals in the dark web. we show you the technology they use to do it.

from ebay to amazon and beyond, the internet revolutionized how we buy things. check this out. global sales are projected to nearly double from $840 billion last year to more than 1.5 trillion in 2018. ment web's convenience and speed made it essential for any business trying to reach consumers and reach into their wallets. including that of rick ulbricht, the founder of silk road, serving a life sentence in prison. it enabled buyers to purchase drugs online, to the tune of $200 million, before it was shut down in 2013. the privacy and anonymity game thanks to tor, the door that opens the dark web. it stands for the onion router.

and the software includes features that resemble the layers of an onion, helping to provide the cover that makes the dark web a place why groups and people operate outside the law. mary snow took a tour, where almost anything goes, and everything is for sale. >> reporter: on the dark websites advertising from heroin to hitmen, from sex to autognatic rifles are hidden behind layers of anonymity. taking me on a tour, former black hat hacker. >> they are selling sabres, knives, an oozi. >> this is typical of weapons, no background checks, just sell it on the deep web. >> no checks of any kind, as long as you have money. >> the mission of the dark web

was to protect confidential secrets and have open source intelligence gathering, and used a programme called tor. using a network of tunnels. it allows individuals to share networks without compromising privacy, and was adopted by journalists and activists in countries like iran and syria, where information is censored. it was not long before nefarious characters found a place to operate. >> we see guns for sale. no one is coming to police us. how can this happen? >> people can't police you. the way that you find a computer is through its ip address, and when you go in through torr there's no address, you could enter through anywhere in the

world. >> tor created by the navy, never envisioning the dark side of what they were creating. >> this is a problem with a lot of our policies. we have never imagined or done crime proof of course, where we thought about how what we developed can be used and abused by non-state actors. it's like pandora's box, it can't be shut back in. >> reporter: this doctor leads a team of experts monitoring cyber crime and the dark web. >> the links change often. they are shut down or busted. >> silk road, case in point. it was the largesest marketplace at the time the feds seized it and arrested its founder in 2013. days later a new commerce site

called silk road 2.0 went up and the buying and selling of illicit its continued. >> you can hire a hacker. >> reporter: rent a hacker, experienced hacker. never had a real job, i had a good amount of time hacking. this time last year it was believed there were 18,000 products on the dark web. today there's nearly 69,000. two-thirds of the inventories are drugs. the rest include weapons, stolen credit card accounts. human organs, and as we found out. hit men for hire. >> solutions, former mercenaries from ffl. $180,000. someone missing in action. $240,000. death by accident.

$300,000. to paralyze them. as much as $100,000. we don't know if it's real, but it's advertising. >> what it says is how do we know you are not scammers, we don't take prepayments. >> it's hard to believe it can't be policed. >> very difficult. >> the dark web is a good place to engage in this practice. >> james wrote the best selling cyber space and said many worrying are in different countries where there are no treaties. >> the thing about the dark web is it's largely invisible to law enforcement. all illegal activities moved to the dark web. counterfeiting. illicit arms trade. >> reporter: teens, young rained

girls, real rape. do you find a lot. >> of course you can find just about anything. there are over 50,000 human traffic sites on the dark web, with traffickers spending 250 million, posting $60 million on the internet. between encryption, bitcoins and the dark web. prosecu prosecuting crimeslinged to the site is difficult. the internet is our first century crime scene, and the evidence that we need to find about the cases is found historically, digitally stored in the web. >> reporter: tracking the footprint was nearly impossible until recently. the u.s. defense, research projects agency built a project intended to crackdown on sex trafficking rings and other commerce on the dark web.

now it's only in the hands of a few agencies. the sex trafficking unit is among them. >> it is google on steroids. it crawls the web, not just the crust of the earth, but the whole core, down to the core, and as it crawls the web, it's able to look for, with specialised technology, photographs and match photographs and watch phone numbers from - that are embedded in different photographs, and to pull them up and put them in a manageable database that we can access and review. >> so far rt technology led to two convictions and eight indictments and sex trafficking cases. >> i heard law enforcement refer to it as waca moll. is that how you describe it in terms of shutting rates down. >> yes. >> the problem is that many working in government are not as

flexible as the criminals. we are dealing with a nimble opponent. >> reporter: and we are losing. >> yes. >> that's my show for today, i'm ali velshi, thank you for joining us. [ ♪ ] hi everybody, this is al jazeera america. and welcome to america votes 2016. our coverage. first democratic presidential debate. i'm john seigenthaler. >> i'm joie chen. >> it's held at the hotel in las vegas. there's