Accused Zotob Worm Author Says Money Was Motive

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com has an excerpt of an online interview with "Diabl0", the 18-year-old that Moroccan authorities arrested on suspicion of writing the Zotob and Mytob worms, as well as the Rbot trojan. In the back-and-forth, Diabl0 says his worms "spread only for money" and hints that the motive was receiving commissions from installing spyware on infected computers."

Comments

Commission Theft

[HermanAB]

There are companies that makes huge amounts of money from installing redirection software on computers, for example 180 Networks. The software effectively makes online purchases appear to originate from 180 Networks, therefore if a user goes to for example Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or Dell, or anybody that pays referral commissions to buy something, 180 gets sent a commission. Obviously for this to work properly, new commission theft software needs to disable or remove existing commission theft software.

Re:Commission Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's* an interesting writeup regarding 180networks.

On another interesting note, the privacy policy of the site where 180 networks 'officially' distributes it's crapware, http://zango.com/, bears no mention of this referrer-stealing. Ironically, they are even so bold as to show a little anti-spyware animated GIF at the bottom of the page**.



*Coral cached to avoid toasting some poor web server just because it hosts an interesting file.
**No coral cache for leeching scumbags.

Re:What?

[slavemowgli]

No, it's the other way around - Zotob is cleaned by some other worms.

F-Secure has a hi-tech diagram how it works here.

Re:Anti Virus firms will kick his butt

[mroch]

"viri" is the dative or ablative plural form of "virus" in Latin, but "virus" in its current form is derived through Middle English, which pluralizes with "es" instead of "i."

Cartago delenda est

[HermanAB]

Traditionally, their main purpose is to annoy Europe or attack it with elephants or something - nowadays, it is computer viruses. I think I prefer elephants...

Re:Anti Virus firms will kick his butt

[mabinogi]

The thing that always bugs me about the virii thing, is that it's completely irrelevant how it's pluralized in Latin.

Regardless of it being a Latin loan word, it's an English word now, and therefore "viruses" is absolutely the correct way to pluralize it, just as cactuses, and octopuses are correct English words.

Re:Anti Virus firms will kick his butt

[zambuka]

Viri in latin has nothing to do with viruses.
http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl? stem=vir&ending=i

Viri is man.
Virus is poison or slimy liquid and is not pluralised in latin as far as I am aware.

Re:What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?

[LittleBigLui]

Instead, try to figure out how it's our fault that the Iranians are killing people for such ludicrous "offenses."

Easy. From Wikipedia:

The 16th century saw renewed independence with the Safavids and then other lines of kings or shahs. During the 19th century Persia came under pressure from both Russia and the United Kingdom leading to a process of modernisation that continued into the 20th century. By the 20th century Iranians were longing for a change and thus followed the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905/1911. In 1953 Iran's prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected to parliament in 1923 and again in 1944 and who had been prime minister since 1951, was removed from power in a complex plot orchestrated by British and US intelligence agencies ("Operation Ajax").

Many scholars suspect that this ouster was motivated by British-US opposition to Mossadeq's attempt to nationalize Iran's oil. Following Mossadeq's fall, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran's monarch) grew increasingly dictatorial. With strong support from the USA and the UK, the Shah further modernised Iranian industry but crushed civil liberties. His autocratic rule, including systematic torture and other human rights violations, led to the Iranian revolution and overthrow of his regime in 1979. After more than a year of political struggle between a variety of different groups, an Islamic republic was established under the Ayatollah Khomeini by popular vote.

So USA and UK tried to protect the Iranian people from a - umm - democratic regime and reinstalled their beloved tyrant. The ungrateful Iranians didn't like that, revolted, and from that mess emerged another group of tyrants, which like to kill people for ludicous "offenses".

While the new tyrans aren't the USA/UKs fault per se, it is obvious that their rise to power was eased by USA/UKs greed for oil and their lack of respect for democracy and autonomy.

q.e.d.

Re:What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?

[AstroDrabb]

Your wrong. All the scripture that you quoted is in the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures). Those laws were given to the Jews, not the Gentiles. The New Testament is what was given to the Christians. In fact, the New Testament even says that the old laws of the Hebrew Scriptures are not needed:

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Galatians 5:14

You would be more accurate if you had said

Anyone who claims to be a Jew but does not follow these rules is picking and choosing the rules they want to follow.

"Real" Christians understand the New Testament and apply it knowing that the Hebrew Scriptures are not needed anymore for laws. The reason that Christianity can get a bad rap is because there are "Christians" who don't even understand their own religion. The whole underlying point of the New Testament is LOVE. No where in the New Testament does it say anything about how you should kill this person or that person because they did XYZ. It is all about love and forgiveness. Jesus forgave Mary for being a hooker and stopped people from stoning her to death. Jesus turned the other cheek, etc, etc.