When Malware Authors Combine Efforts

An anonymous reader writes "Spammers, Hackers and virus writers are all teaming up according to some russian security researchers. This means that they reckon that weaknesses will be exploited in a matter of hours of being announced, rather thant the weeks and months that we're seeing now. Scary stuff."

Comments

Uhm.. You know those russian security experts

[Phixxr]

Is it just me, or does it seem that every story that lists the source as a "Russian Security Expert" is generally a load of crap?

-Phixxr

Et tu, Slashdot?

[menkhaura]

Mistaking hacker for cracker is acceptable on the general media, where people aren't very aware of such subtleties. But on Slashdot? C'mon, I know Slashdot is crawling with Windows users, wannabes and such, but this is getting offhand!

Jabberwocky!

[jaypifer]

"This is why vulnerabilities are so important," said Kaspersky. "We are against anyone who publishes vulnerabilities because it gives hackers a tool."

And this is why most people are against security by obscurity. Kaspersky is confused. The tired phrase of "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." applies even more pertinently to software vulnerabilities.

By the time someone with enough motivation (read funding) to write an article on a vulnerability does so, the bad guys have already written exploits. Why? For the same reason...they get paid!

The published articles allow the moderately tech savvy user to protect themself. Additionally, it forces the software makers' hand to close the vulnerability faster than if they had no pressure at all. Ultimately, this is our only way of shaming large companies into creating proper software and delaying the releases until they've created a more hardened product.

Yes, hanging out the dirty laundry of vulnerabilities makes it easy for the junior hackers to create something out of nothing, but I'd rather we all know about the problems at the same time than a few sophisticated spam hackers knowing about the problems for an indefinite amount of time.