This 'Catch-22' Helps Make Hackers Stronger Than Ever

Recent security breaches - including the leak of 200,000 Snapchat photos to the website 4chan and the apparent infiltration of Dropbox - raise new questions about how hackers are able to proliferate.

Hackers buy and sell our private data in a black market that is so organized and well-protected that it's tough for law enforcement officials to keep up with sites that often pop up overnight and disappear by the next morning.

When officials do manage to take down these sites, new ones tend to pop up in their place. A report released earlier this year by the RAND Corporation's National Security Research Division shows how the consequences of such takedowns are transitory at best and may even lead to the creation of better, more sophisticated sites.

Here are some black market sites that re-emerged almost immediately after they were taken down:

As the information above shows, the hackers' market is highly resilient. According to the RAND report, law enforcement takedowns of sites selling stolen data only temporarily affect the black market. More arrests lead to more media coverage, which can inform potential hackers about the benefits of the black market.

As the RAND report says, "[L]aw enforcement may become a victim of its own success."

This leads to a dangerous "Catch-22," where arresting hackers makes other hackers more aware of just how lucrative the black market can be. These hackers can also learn how to make their own sites stronger after others get busted. They can then recreate the sites using updated tools, making them more secure and even harder to detect.