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Interview with a Botmaster
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is running a fascinating feature profiling a couple of botnet operators who make thousands of dollars each month installing adware on machines they infect. This is by far the most detailed examination of this issue I've seen so far -- and includes an interview with the CEO of 180Solutions, as well as interviews with some of the botmasters' victims. From the story: 'Most days, I just sit at home and chat online while I make money,' 0x80 says. 'I get one check like every 15 days in the mail for a few hundred bucks, and a buncha others I get from banks in Canada every 30 days.' He says his work earns him an average of $6,800 per month, although he's made as much as $10,000. Not bad money for a high school dropout.'"
There are only around 1500 males resident in the town, that's not a large haystack.
I just verified the location data in those two jpegs. I dragged the picture on my desktop (using Mac OS X) and clicked on 'Get Info'. E voila: Roland, OK. The info is still there.
in 10.3 and 10.4 Software Update automatically lets me know when and what updates are availible for all Apple software on my machine. If I decline and update of any kind for whatever reason, it lets me know again 12 hours (approx) later, untill I finally update. I wouldn't say your characterization is true of "most versions" of OS X. Can't say for versions or Linux. And why you're grouping OSX and Linux together anyways just seems silly.
Check out the Washington Post's multimedia search results for roland, ok. The first three appear to be from this article and all indicate a location of Roland, OK in the search results.
You can see the pictures themselves
The metadata on the photos appears to be intact so I have no reason to doubt that the location information in the caption of each photo is accurate as well, although I suppose it could be disinformation or the place the photographer downloaded them or whatever. I had intended to display the metadata (EXIF picture/camera/exposure info + IPTC captions, etc) for each of the files here, but you'll have to go look at it yourselves because I can't quickly find a utility to export all of it to a nice text file. Even the small thumbnail photos still embedded in the story have the caption info showing the location, so just go expolore if you're looking for it.
"And in fact on Linux/MacOS the user has to manually trigger a software update"
you've never used a mac have you? it is hard not to notice the SECURITY UPDATE icon BOUNCING like crazy on the dock
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The usual places where you rent botnets, Specialham and Spamforum are down today. When the heat is on, they tend to go offline, but come back in days or weeks.
He actually has half of his face in one of the pictures, and his mouth in another. If one were so inclined, you could splice together the two images to create something that looks like
this.
Not as great as a mugshot, especially with the slightly different perspectives of the two pictures, but it might do. A little reconstruction by a skilled artist, and you could have a really accurate full-face.
He must have gone to Roland High School. Anyone want to give them a call? (918) 427-7419
I feel bad if this kid really had been planning on getting out, but I've known people who "planned" on getting out for years and never did. And I've been cleaning spyware crap off of people's computers for years.
The ______ Agenda