I found this video today, and I thought it was interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwIufSEcRx4 (DEFCON 17: Stealing Profits from Stock Market Spammers)
In short, it's a talk from a speaker at DEFCON talking about how he learned to identify email pump and dump spam that looked like it was going to be "successful" (based on factors like botnet size, which spammer is doing it, the format of the email, and so on).
He then hypothesized that he could buy in before the "crowds" bought in on the hype, and then dump it for an easy opportunity. He unfortunately never seemed to have got around to it (because the spammers stopped) - but he did test the hypothesis.
I have one question - is what he did illegal in any way? Or is there any regulation regarding what he did?
To me it seems not illegal - I cannot imagine a lack of malicious intent, and making money off identifying a scam, is illegal. He's not damaging the people who held on too long. But just wondering.
It seems like something you could do with any pump n dump if you could figure out how to early identify a "successful scam".
Submitted April 07, 2019 at 12:57PM by CrasyMike http://bit.ly/2WS7ua2
