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US Leads the World In Malware Creation
PetManimal writes "Symantec says that China, Russia, and the other developing countries usually blamed for the increasing amount of malware are not the biggest culprits. The security software company released a report (PDF) claiming that the US leads the world in a number of malware categories, ranging from the 'amount of malicious activity originating from their networks' to 'underground economy servers.' Preston Gralla says the US lead should come as no surprise, considering the capitalist way of life and the high level of technical knowledge. He also suggests that the some of the 'criminals' may actually be Internet entrepreneurs who crossed over to the dark side: 'It's an inevitable result of a thriving free market and tech expertise. An underground economy often mirrors the legal, above-ground one. Scratch a criminal, and sometimes you find a misguided entrepreneur, looking to get rich a little too quick.'"
During the depths of the IT recession, there were rumbles of out-of-work programmers talking about joining the "dark side" out of frustration. Perhaps many did.
Table-ized A.I.
There are a number of fairly organized malware purveyors from Canada as well, I think what separates the malware originating from North America, and the malware coming from the East is the purpose of the malware.
In NA, its mainly spyware or extortionware.
From the East a majority of them are keyloggers, dialers.
Takes one to know one. Symantec's software has all the qualities you'd ever want in a well crafted piece of malware.
Scratch a criminal, and sometimes you find a misguided entrepreneur, looking to get rich a little too quick.
Is malware even illegal? How is malware different from say, an automatic update or some other less than desirable software? Just because something is annoying doesn't necessarily mean it's illegal and that the author is a criminal.
Agreed , not all 'malware' is out to get you, there is a fine line though between
adware and 'malware' at times.
a good software engineer, that is a 'real engineer' would refuse to create such a product, as they are sworn to protect the public interest at all costs.
A programmer mind you, unless they are ethical, goes where the money is.
Lets call the industry what it is, and the workers what they are. Engineers != programmers.
Engineers can be held accountable, in many ways. Programmers on the other hand, can always hide behind the shield of the corporation.
But don't forget high speed pizza delivery too!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That said . . . in your face, China, Russia and the other developing countries - in your face!
Oh, and a slight aside to the /. eds - I suspect that both the Chinese and the Russian people would be *ahem* amused at having their respective countries referred to as "developing countries". Just sayin'
I would guess that those numbers correspond to the number of users combined with the number of users who have no idea what computer security means.
How many people buy a computer without knowing how to use one safely? How many of those people buy a computer and run around on the internet as administrator?
Anytime you have a large number of users who do not understand or care to secure their computers, you will have higher numbers of those users who have been owned.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
We all know that Microsoft makes the most common malware known to computing. There was never really any competition to stop the USA getting the title.
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So shut up or leave are the only options? One isn't alowed to criticise what one sees as a problem in a country one loves, perhaps in hope it will get rectified once enough people point it out? I find your attitude rather similar to that of many hard-line communists. Besides, we are talking about malware created in the US, not targeted to the US.
AccountKiller
Sometime when you're looking for an evening's entertainment (and not in the company of others, unless they also find this sort of thing terribly interesting), fire up a VMWare VM and load it up with Windows XP SP1, then fire up Internet Explorer and browse around. For fastest results, be sure to hit up some of the seedier side of the internet -- a quick Google for "serial numbers" will get you malware-ridden sites within the first few results. Then, just hit yourself on the head or otherwise simulate a stupid/ignorant user, and click "OK" to anything the computer prompts at you for a few minutes.
In short order, you will probably have so much adware, malware, Trojans, and keyloggers on the VM, it's nearly impossible to ever clean it out (AFAIK you really can't with any reliability say that a machine once rooted is 'clean' until you zero the drive and reinstall from media). Monitoring the network connections and traffic that the VM makes is also pretty interesting. (Its easiest if you set up the VM's virtual interface with a different IP than the host machine's physical interface.)
If you want to go for a second round, Google "adware removal" and download or run the first half-dozen or so tools that you see; chances are at least some of them will make the problem worse.
The benefit of doing this in a VM is you can trivially roll the system back to an uncorrupted state, and just banish the thing altogether when you're done entertaining yourself. It really caused me to appreciate two things: one, reminding me why I don't use that OS at home, and two, the absolutely ridiculous amount of effort that must be spent (patching, updating, firewalling, antivirusing, user training) to keep the billions of Windows machines that people depend on from succumbing to the same fate in a matter of minutes.
Anyone who doesn't use Windows on a regular basis should do that every year or so, if only for the "there, but for the grace of God..." value.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Heh. While I find your comment amusing I must point out it's not the /.er's fault that China and Russia are considered developing countries. Blame human geographers for that. Russia and China are considered Developing by those groups. Personally I think it's just silly, who are we (people in general, not the US) to determine what style of life is better than another, but hey, that's how it is.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
At least we still lead the world in something! Take that, Indian outsourcing companies.
Where does it become a critical problem. Well, if you get a system that is infected, you may start having problems with not only your system, but with your enterprise network. In many cases, as you might expect. The end result is that the software tries to spread itself to other and begins to use all of the bandwidth you have on your enterprise for that purpose. If you have unprotected 'everyone' shares, the software can even propagate itself to others on your network, much like a virus or Trojan and then they start transmitting too. In the worse case scenario, you may receive communication from your ISP indicating that an address within your enterprise has a problem and unless you solve it, they will discontinue services. AT&T, Qwest, the RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Companies) and others follow this practice now.
"Scratch a criminal, and sometimes you find a misguided entrepreneur, looking to get rich a little too quick.'"
You could say the same thing about crack dealers or contract killers, am I supposed to be sympathetic to them too?
I'm not bothered by the legal aspects as much as the ethical ones. If someone is hurting someone else, they're doing something wrong. End of story.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I worked with a guy, when we were working on malware removal techniques, who did exactly this. Our google search was either 'warez' or 'crackz', I can't recall. He even played the stupid user - "Yeah, I'm sure I can install this activeX stuff, whatever that means...The site told me to hit OK" - and the box was LEVELED beyond repair in under 5 minutes and 10 sites. We had to pull the virtual ethernet card on it. It got to the point that the box almost got beligerent as we tried to pull the malware out... This stuff isn't your typical virus from 10 years ago! I forget how many hits we picked up from adaware and spybot, but it was in the several hundreds. Oh, and it was a SP2 box, as well.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Criticism is equal to hate when your IQ is below 60. Or if you're a member of the Bush administration.
Sorry for the repetition.
He also suggests that the some of the 'criminals' may actually be Internet entrepreneurs who crossed over to the dark side
And they're different from the kind that run companies to the ground, create loopholes to avoid domestic workers, and fake their deaths to void convictions? Somehow the differences aren't stacking up.
It's an inevitable result of a thriving free market and tech expertise.
Apparently the Midwest hasn't gotten the memo on that one, since the 2001 recession is still going, continued by 2003's wave of job theft. There are some things that Ivy League economists will never understand. Thriving and "free market" somehow just aren't mixing in places that get the idea of not treating businesses like $DEITY.
An underground economy often mirrors the legal, above-ground one. Scratch a criminal, and sometimes you find a misguided entrepreneur, looking to get rich a little too quick.'
Wasnt that covered in Enron, Worldcom, HP (Hurd and Fiorina), and about any organization that uses loopholes to offshore work? That seems to point to a "misguided entrepreneur" as being one that has some morals left in them, not someone who's gone criminal.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I would say quite often in fact, but that's just my opinion. I think there is something in what serves as the basic moral code in American-style business, that makes it difficult to know where the line goes. Now don't take this as an attack on Americans or even America in general, but the kind of business ethics that is tought to American MBAs etc, is scarily devoid of what normal people would consider good moral.
I once read about a class situation at one university - I don't recall the exact circumstances, but perhaps somebody else recognises it. The professor asked the class 'You are in charge of marketing a new medicine, and you receive reports that this medicine may be dangerous. What is the right thing to do?' Most would say things like 'We have to hold back and find out whether this product is actually dangerous and perhaps stop selling it' - but the 'right' answer, according to the professor was 'You keep on selling as much as possible until the company is forced to stop. Your only concern should be the shareholders' profit'
This story, I think, tells just how twisted things can be. When young people are told that they have to commit moral and ethical suicide like this, how should they be able to see the fine line between being a creative entrpreneur and an outright criminal? If the size of the profit is what determines how 'right' or 'good' your actions are, then surely crime is perfectly justfied law abiding citizens are simply idiots, little better than cattle?
Advert for the Economist at the moment reads:
"Invest in the 4th largest world economy. Before it's number 1. China"
Since when is criticism equal to hate?
...or so it seems.
Since September 11, 2001.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I was watching a lecture by Neil DeGrasse Tyson wherein he made the point that the country that discovered something gets to name it. The Muslim world named most of the stars in the sky. The Greeks named most of the constellations. The US named most of the heaviest elements on the table, so we get names like Californium and Berkelium.
And since we made the Internet, we get to name it. That's why there's .co.uk and not .co.us. And it's also why .gov is the US government and not .gov.us. Just like every postage stamp outside of the UK has to have the country of origin on it because the Brits invented the postage stamp, we get the TLDs because we invented the Internet.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
If Americans did have a high level of technical knowledge, the amount of spyware infections (and related matters) would be significantly lower. Considering we lead the world in malware creation, that argues for a lower level of technical knowledge.
Punch the monkey to win money! Give us your email address and we'll send you free offers! Install this program to prevent infections!
Let's put it this way: I went to the dentist recently and the girl who was going to scrape my teeth asked what I did and where I worked. When I told her I work in IT and for a specific government agency, she said that she wished she knew more about computers but she didn't have the time to figure them out.
So, we have someone who admits they don't know enough about a subject yet aren't willing to take the time to learn more about it. Yup, this America. If it isn't easy, we're not interested.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Did the author of this post even read the paper? The U.S. leads the world in Malicious Activity, this is very different from malware. Malicious Activity = phishing sites, attacks, command and control servers, bots, spam zombies and malicious code infections. The United States is the top country for the combination of all of these things. The paper does not state anywhere that the United States is the source of the most malware!