In the coming weeks we will no doubt see the first volley of breathless predictions for the Christmas 2007 online shopping season. Even with fears of a recession bubbling up in the United States, a run on bank deposits in the UK, and anxious Europeans looking on, the e-commerce market this holiday season has only one place to go: up.

At some point, the year-on-year growth will cease. But not now. It’s still too early. High street retailers ought to be fretting. Their online rivals are much more recession-proof, simply because e-tailers’ customer base is much more affluent, and therefore less vulnerable to the sub-prime fallout or overdraft penalties. If overall retail sales are down this year, it won’t be the e-tailers suffering.

But it’s not an entirely rosy picture either. The rise of web fraud is outstripping even the double-digit growth of online holiday sales. APACS, the UK payment processing trade body, reports that so-called “card not present fraud” – when somebody pilfers your credit card details without you knowing and racks up bogus charges – committed online in 2006 topped £212 million, up 32 per cent on the previous year. The statistics show credit card thieves have all but abandoned offline opportunities for this type of fraud. Nearly three quarters of fraudulent transactions made with stolen credit card details are committed online, APACS reports.

None of this surprises Pedro Bustamante. As senior research advisor at Madrid-based Panda Security, Mr Bustamante spends a great deal of time checking out what’s on offer in the many underground online markets where aspiring fraudsters get started. Botnets-for-hire, keyword loggers, customisable Trojans, malware and viruses, spam e-mail lists, stolen credit card details, bank passwords: it can all be purchased online, and cheaply. There are also fenced items – digital cameras and smart phones selling at an 80 or 90 per cent discount. But the real draw is the cybercrime starter kits. For a few extra quid, you can add customer support, particularly helpful when wanting to try out a new banking Trojan that can outwit most anti-virus filters.

No more than £600, Mr Bustamante estimates, is required to acquire the malware needed to start out a lucrative cybercrime operation. For that price, you can purchase:

- a Trojan capable of burrowing into unsuspecting PCs to steal confidential bank details. Price: £150 to £300

- A list of one million e-mail addresses, the recipients of your new Trojan. Price: £50

- Want to snare instant message users too? For £75, you can take home a million ICQ addresses.

- Would you like your malware to go undetected? Hidden executables to outsmart anti-virus filters cost less than a fiver a piece. Something called “Polaris polymorphic encryption” enables the young crook to customise his precious pilfering software for stealth purposes. Cost? £10

- Lastly, you’ll need a spam server to barrage your clueless victims, and to do so anonymously. That will cost £250

“In the better known marketplaces,” says Mr Bustamante, “these forums have about 50 to 100 sellers. The business is conducted via IM, rarely on the site itself. I suspect there is a lot more business than what we can actually see”.

What he has seen is that the transactions are conducted in two languages: English and Russian. The sellers seem to come exclusively from Russia, and their business from all over the world. Russian vendors will often cut major discounts for their fellow countrymen, he adds. Non-Russians have to be full price.

But don’t be tricked into believing the Russians have this market cornered. “There is definitely a global market,” Mr Bustamante says. “This market doesn’t know about boundaries. The only reason it is located in Russia is the law. In Russia, it is like the wild, wild West. If you tried to do the same thing in the US or Europe, you would get busted right away.”

But a tougher approach wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem either. If the Russian authorities ever break up the racket, Mr Bustamante says, the trade will simply move elsewhere. It is that big.

After this Christmas, it will be bigger.

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