Digital Archaeology: How Collecting and Studying Carding Artifacts Helps Preserve Internet History

[Professor]

Idea: To position old phishing kits, skimmers, and forum screenshots as part of digital cultural heritage. To explore the communities of enthusiasts and researchers who preserve this code and newsworthy events as monuments of the era, studying the evolution of interfaces, slang, and technology.

Abstract: The internet forgets quickly. For years, popular websites, memes, and entire digital subcultures disappear without a trace, erased by updates, platform shutdowns, and natural oblivion. However, there is a layer of digital history that disappears especially quickly — the traces of cybercrime. But it is precisely in this “digital shadow” that the technological trends, social codes, and cultural patterns of the era are imprinted with incredible precision. This article is about digital archaeologists who, against all odds, collect, catalog, and study artifacts of the carding era: phishing kits, skimmers, and forum screenshots. Their work is not about romanticizing crime, but about saving a unique layer of our shared digital heritage.

Introduction: Why should we preserve what everyone wants to erase?​

When police shut down a darknet marketplace or a hosting provider removes a phishing page, the goal is clear: to stop a crime. But along with the server, an entire microcosm is erased — a unique cultural and technological "layer." These layers, superimposed on one another, constitute the true history of the internet — a history not only of victories, but also of struggle, experimentation, and adaptation on its wild digital frontiers. Preserving these artifacts is as important as preserving virus samples for the history of medicine or the blueprints of obsolete weapons for the history of technology.

1. Artifact Gallery: What Do Digital Archaeologists Collect?​

Collectors and researchers are focusing on physical and digital evidence from bygone eras of cybercrime.

1.1. Phishing Kits – Time Capsules of Web Design.

• Artifact: A complete archive of files used to deploy a fake bank, email, or social media page. Includes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and PHP scripts.
• Historical value: These are perfect snapshots of web technology of their time. The whale code can be used to determine:
  • Popular versions of libraries (jQuery, Bootstrap).
  • Obfuscation techniques used to bypass antivirus software.
  • The evolution of the interface design of legitimate services (after all, phishing copied them exactly).
  • Language features and geography of the target audience (translations, domains).
  • Conclusion: A phishing kit is not only a fraudulent tool, but also a mirror of web standards and UX/UI trends of a particular year.

1.2. Malicious software (Trojans, loggers, skimmers) – evolution of programming languages and techniques.

• Artifact: Source code or executable files of known malware families (ZeuS, SpyEye, Carbanak).
• Historical value:Code analysis shows:
  • Language migration: From complex low-level C++ code to scripting languages (Python, PowerShell) and integration into legal platforms (macros in documents).
  • The evolution of stealth techniques: How methods of hiding from detection have changed over time, from simple file renaming to complex rootkits and the use of legitimate OS tools (Living-off-the-Land).
  • Architectural solutions: Modularity, a plugin system, and the use of encryption all reflect the level of professionalism in the industry.
  • Conclusion: A malware library is a technical chronicle of the arms race between offense and defense, written in programming languages.

1.3. Screenshots and dumps of forums, Telegram chats – sociolinguistic cross-section.

• Artifact: Recordings of conversations, discussions, and advertising posts from darknet forums and closed channels.
• Historical value:This is invaluable material for sociologists and linguists.
  • The evolution of slang: How the terms "dump," "fullz," "drop," and "guarantor" were born and changed. How global English-language slang blended with local slang.
  • Social dynamics: How hierarchy was built, how disputes were resolved, how informal rules and “ethics” of the community were formed.
  • Economic indicators: Data price dynamics, demand for specific banks or regions, reaction to legal pressures (closure of platforms).
  • Conclusion: These screenshots are ethnographic field recordings of a digital tribe, documenting its culture, language, and social institutions.

1.4 Physical devices: Skimmers and other “gadgets”.

• Artifact: Hardware skimmers for ATMs, RFID readers, card programming devices.
• Historical value: They demonstrate the convergence of consumer technology and criminal engineering. A homemade Arduino board from 2012 and a makeshift Raspberry Pi-based skimmer from 2018 are markers of the accessibility and miniaturization of technologies that were also used in legitimate DIY projects.

2. Guardian Communities: Who is doing this and why?​

This work is carried out by several types of communities, driven by different but complementary motives.

• Cybersecurity researchers (Academics & Threat Intelligence Analysts): For them, archives are a database for longitudinal threat analysis. By studying the evolution of methods, they can make predictions. Their collections are often private, but their research is published in analytical reports.
• Historians of technology and digital humanities (Digital Historians): They are interested in the internet as a cultural phenomenon. They see carded artifacts as part of a "folk" digital history, created not by corporations, but by anonymous actors. They strive for public archiving and contextualization, like a museum.
• Enthusiasts and archivists (The Archive Team, independent collectors): Driven by the idea that "the internet must not forget," they download and preserve content en masse from shuttered forums and websites, including dark web ones. Their goal is the pure preservation of digital objects.

3. Methods and Ethics of Digital Archaeology​

This work requires a special approach.

• Legality and Security: Artifacts are collected in isolated, secure environments (virtual machines, sandboxes). Researchers never distribute active malware and carefully anonymize data that could harm people (real card numbers, passport data).
• Contextualization: Simply collecting a file isn't enough. It's important to capture metadata : creation date, source link, and related events (e.g., "This whale appeared a week after the data leak at Company X").
• Focus on the cultural code, not the instructions: Public displays of artifacts (in articles, virtual museums) always shift the emphasis from the technical details of the hack to their cultural, historical, and technological significance.

4. Why does the future need this? Practical and philosophical value​

Preserving this heritage is not just a collector's whim.

1. Educational resource: These artifacts are the best teaching aids for the history of cybersecurity. They illustrate the evolution of threats using real-world, not hypothetical, examples.
2. Investigative tool: Old codes and methods often "reincarnate." The archive helps quickly identify the revival of old malware families or attribute attacks by style.
3. Understanding Sociotechnical Systems: Carding artifacts demonstrate how technology, economics, and social behavior are intertwined. This provides a case study for studying how communities adapt to changing conditions.
4. Preserving the Completeness of the Digital Chronicle: History, from which all dark and inconvenient pages have been erased, is not history. It is a myth. The internet has been and remains a space of contrasts, and its legacy should reflect this.

Conclusion: Memory as an Antidote​

The digital archaeology of carded artifacts accomplishes an important feat: it legitimizes the memory of a phenomenon without legitimizing the phenomenon itself. It separates the cultural and historical value of evidence from the moral judgment of the actions that generated it.

By preserving a phishing kit from the 2010s, we preserve not a method of deception, but a snapshot of the web aesthetics and security posture of that time. By preserving a forum screenshot, we preserve not a criminal conspiracy, but the living language and social connections of the digital underground.

Ultimately, this work is an act of respect for the complexity and multifaceted nature of the internet. It reminds us that our digital civilization was built not only by geniuses in Silicon Valley garages, but also in quiet rooms around the world, where other geniuses, driven by different motives, tested its strength. Their tools and traces are as much a part of our shared digital history as the first website, the first spam, or the first meme. And to understand where we are going, we need to remember where we came from - with all the paths, even those that led into the shadows.