Slashdot Mirror
Heise Online Reveals Trojan / Spam Connection
yourruinreverse writes "Virus distributors have been caught red-handed selling IP addresses of trojan-infected machines by editors of the German IT magazine c't. Several individuals appear to have been arrested already after c't, revealing one of the virus writer's nationality as British, passed on the information to Scotland Yard. Check out the German article first, then its translation on Groklaw and maybe also same translation posted in the English section of the Heise website (in order of appearance)."
"With the help of c't, a student of computer science has tracked down the authors of a computer virus. The editorial staff were able to establish contact with the virus distributors and buy IP addresses of infected machines. Because one of the virus distributors has been located in Great Britain, c't has passed on all information to Scotland Yard. By now, individuals in several countries have been arrested."
The Slashdot heading leaves out that it was a College Student who did this primarily. Will this continue to be a pattern in the future? I sure hope so, as law enforcement is typically behind the times, and overworked as it is. This way, order is still maintained without vigilante justice, since those in the know involved proper law enforcment.
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OK, we all knew it, but maybe this will be enough incentive for the major news outlets to pick the story up. In an ideal world people would see this story, realize that much of the spam they get can be blamed on viruses and patch their systems.
Too bad we don't live in a perfect world.
...i'm sorry to say it, but goddamn, an example needs to be made of these fools.
plain and simple: virus writing will get you in deep shit.
I think we've hit the point where three outlawed industries are now joining forces to support each other. P2P file sharing is an application consumers want but just isn't legal. Therefore, the writers of P2P applications just can't use legal means to collect money for it, they have to get paid under the table. Spyware and virus writers have the same goal, find any way possible to get their software onto your computer so they can get it to do their bidding. To them, how they get their payload isn't important How do they get paid? Well, who most needs distributed computing resorces with scattered IP addresses and bandwidth? Spammers. So, they'll gladly pay the creators of bot nets for their services, in a way no ethical buyer ever word. So there you have it, the connection between P2P and spam...
Uh. Why do you think zombie networks and selling access to them wasn't a problem earlier?
Viruses are finally sophisticated enough to create botnets, and spammers have become more and more desperate for ways to pump their e-mail out.
The machines infected with the trojans can be used as spam relays.. sure - but at the same time theyre also a gold mine for fraud, just think about all the data stored on the hard drives available for download - financial data, all kinds of private documents.. this worries me more than spam. I think data theft will become a hotter topic in the near future.
From some of the spam I've been getting, I think that some spammers are playing with zombie relay malware. That allows them to load up a whole spam run on a zombie machine and move on to the next one. I'll bet that their relay software is designed to not look like an open relay to anyone else. Why share the box with other spammers, and why set off open relay detectors?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. While it sickens me, I don't find this to be that startling. I, for one, have always thought the people who write malware are scum. They may try to justify their actions with lame claims of: 'Oh, i only did it to show how weak the system is', or 'I am only trying to learn more about the internal workings of the O/S'. But, let's face it, they are little more than little creeps with serious social behavioural problems. They know what they are doing is wrong, yest can find any manner of reason to justify their behaviour. In the end, they are criminals, scum, and a**es. That some are now selling harvestedd ip addresses to spammers should come as no surprise at all. I just wish I knew a way to punish them that would not only satisfy the gravity of their offence, but would also serve as a good deterrent. A pox on all of them.