Russian Firm Pays to Infect PCs with Adware

Jaidev writes "Information week is reporting that a Russian site (IframeDollars) is paying web developers 6 cents for each machine they infect with spyware or adware. One security expert estimates that iframeDollars could collect as much as $75,000 annually from the adware it placed on the infected machines during the third week of May, which cost approximately $12,000 in payments to place"

Comments

When spreading malware becomes this obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

it needs to be dealt with in a very obvious and unsubtle fashion. The owners if iFrameDollars should be killed, publicly and very bloodily as should anyone who works for the company. This might not satisfy strict due process guarantees (OK, it doesn't) but on the other hand these guys are scum and it's not as if we need a trial to prove this. Killing everyone at iFrameDollars will have the salutary effect of making other idiots who are considering this sort of thing think twice, or perhaps even three or four times about it, before they embark on something so odious.

Re:When spreading malware becomes this obvious

[Tim C]

You'd kill over something like this? Get a sense of perspective.

Tracking?

[Mad Merlin]

How do they track this? I guess their malware/adware calls home as soon as it strikes a target. Perhaps there's a possible weakness in this in that you could just keep infecting a VM and then restoring it to a good image again. Think they'd be smart enough to notice something odd about a million infections from the same IP?

Re:Tracking?

[mikael]

They would probably consider one IP address as a single sale.

You could try spoofing false IP addresses, but they would probably be smart enough to have a three stage handshake to make sure the IP address actually existed. Not forgetting checksums to ensure that the whole package was installed. They would probably have this happen every time the machine was switched on/off, in order to know which systems were available for use. And they would probably wait a whole week until they were certain the malware was installed successfully.

Re:First post....

[Alex Belits]

1. US government passes a legislation that destroys a profitable business model.

2. Saudi Arabia develops a housing program that involves building a large number of igloos.

I would rather bet on the second one.

Use of affiliate program business as normal

[NathanBFH]

This isn't really all that suprising. Business is business, whether it's black, gray, or white market. Affiliate programs work, why wouldn't adware businesses use this method to spread their product? It's interesting to see some estimates on their revenue, however. At first I read the slashdot summary and thought they were talking about $75,000 revenue annually and was surprised that anyone would even bother making adware for such pittly money. But the 'Aha!' moment came when I reread it and saw that's the estimated revenue for one-weeks worth of business. Damn, not too shabby.

Re:Everybody is satisfied!

[Paco23]

# We have 3 reliable servers with excellent speed Probably not for very long.

The story left out one very important detail...

[ArsenneLupin]

It didn't answer the question: "Where do I sign up?". I've got a couple of thousands of windows users to teach a lesson to, and if I can make some moolah in the process, so the better!

Re:First post....

[Tsunamio]

I'll take that bet. The US (or any other) government doesn't like profitable business models that attack other, even more profitable business models. Napster may have been making a profit, but that doesn't mean the folks in Washington liked it. And that was something that most voters approved of!

The US government really doesn't like profitable business models from other countries that depend on slowing down our economy (say, by installing malware on all our computers).