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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.'"
This is sick. This is a terrible misuse of the internet. People installing this sort of software on other peoples' computers should be shot on sight - or connection. There needs to be a removal of the incentive for them - such as cutting the money they would receive down to almost nothing.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
So he sits home and chat all day? that sounds like a pretty empty and dull life to me.
I would not mind not having to work for the money, but i would properly do some programming or simular nerd activites.
Just sitting and chatting is okay, but not allday everyday.
Freedom or George Bush
I see a mod of "monster" hunters in this guy's future. --on the other hand, that's a nice chunk of change per month.. Oh, Wait... I've had to remove that Ad-Ware from customer machines... He's a witch. BURN HIM!!!!
Selling crack to highschoolers he could make a multiple of that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm frankly astounded that no other major newspaper has a guy on the computer security beat full time, though technically I think Brian Krebs is attached to the Post's Web site. In any event, I think Krebs is absolutely the best reporter writing about computer security in the mainstream media today. At least since I stopped :-).
The young hacker, who has agreed to be interviewed only if he isn't identified by name or home town,...
... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet," he says.
From the attached photo: LOCATION: Roland, OK
"To tell the truth
Oops.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
It is a fascinating article, a kind of anti-CEBIT that must be played out in thousands of trailer parks and down-at-heel developments all over the world. No real surprises, though. Organized criminal activities are probably the same everywhere: long periods of boredom punctuated by brief spurts of intense activity, and all supported by lies of the "Naturally I wouldn't sink this low if my victims weren't so dumb they deserved it" kind.
I'd still like to see the CEO's of the top six IT companies put on a public platform and made to answer some tough questions. Like, with all their personal billions and access to hundreds of billions in corporate funds, what are they actually doing to track down guys like these and nail them? So far as I can see, the answer is "As little as we can get away with". And the Feds seem to be used as a get out: we've handed the matter over to the Feds so there's absoutely nothing we can do, nudge nudge wink wink, wanna buy Symantec Internet Security cheap to you squire?
Until the IT industry grows up enough to start dealing with some of the consequences it has created, I don't think it deserves anyone's support. And meanwhile Botmaster Dirtbags everywhere will continue to flourish. Just my two cents.
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tournoun pas maï
is that what we are calling script kiddies these days?
I kill botmasters for money. Quick and Discrete. Give target's name and credit card number (with sec. code) on the thread to order.
You're just jealous because I've been chatting online with hot babes all day!
Sounds like he's painted as someone in an economically depressed area with few opportunities, using his skills to make a lot of money for himself.
Which would be the same as with a lot of criminal activities, it seems.
By the end of TFA he's wondering why he hasn't been caught yet, waiting for his little game to blow up in his face. Then talking about joining the Army so he can get into college and make a sustainable future for himself.
Interesting perspective. Not a bad article.
One has little impact on anyone but himself, the other causes headaches for people all over the world.
Some priorities!
From TFA:
0x80 says he got into writing viruses by accident after logging onto an AOL chat room named "Lesbians Only."
.]
"Someone sent me a virus that made it so that every time I typed anything on the keyboard it would pop a message up on the screen that said, 'I'M [expletive] GAY!'" 0x80 recalls. [. .
After that, 0x80 became obsessed with computer viruses and dedicated nearly all his time to tinkering with them.
So if any of you know the moron who spent his free time 7 years ago distributing comical viruses via lame AOL chat rooms. . . give him this message: the tech community which spends disgusting amounts of time fixing the problems your prodigy generates would like a word with you.
Come alone.
I feel sorry for the guys parents and wonder what they did wrong.
They had sex. Next question.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...of the people who frequent /., a lot of you sure seem to be ignorant. How many of you actually completed reading the article? You're quick to talk all kinds of smack about this guy, what a douche he is, etc. but it seems nobody has read near the end of the article where he talks of coming to realize that what he's doing can't last forever, and isn't really all that great, and that he is actually looking at making something of himself instead of doing the crap he currently is. While I don't like what he's been doing, I do applaud his self realization, and the fact that on his own he is admitting it's not great, and actually voices aspirations to do better things, to gain a little discipline. The knowledge he has now and uses to do bad could just as easily be used to do good, and be every bit as lucrative and exciting for him.
Just a little advice folks, as with anything else, be sure to have the whole picture/story before going off half cocked, because it makes you look as dumb as the kid in the article sounds.
Okay, after a double-check I think I stuffed it up. Second try - I think Cheyenne Gentlemen's Club is the strip club, LP Bottle Express is the gas/convenience store (which didn't show up when I searched for "gas station", but did for just "gas" - and the name sounds like a convenience store), and Blue Ribbon Chevrolet is the used-car place.
If so, he'd be located about here . Just about halfway between the strip club and gas station on one side, and the used-car place on the other.
I think this fits much better than my previous attempt - which was way closer to Muldrow than Roland, and too close to a "Main" street that'd have lots of other businesses.
I never thought that journalists might leave metadata in their images -- I thought that they'd have some sort of automated content management system that would take in a TIFF or whatever and spit out a JPEG of the appropriate size for the current design of the web page.
I'm now wondering how many other news stories might have very much unintended data leaks through metadata tags in images. Possibly quite a hell of a lot.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.