The 'Malware Economy' Evolves

superglaze writes "ZDNet UK has a feature on how the malware economy is turning into a recognizable traditional IT economy. Leasing botnets? Malware support? Welcome to the new age of computing. As the piece suggests, it's all gone Darwinian. 'One indication of the maturity of the black economy, according to Telafici, was the recent case of a hacker who wrote a packer [software used to bypass antivirus protection], "threw in the towel recently as it wasn't profitable enough -- there's too much competition. They opened the source code and walked away."'"

Comments

Malware and ex-emailer

[deviated_prevert]

As I receive spam my conclusion is that the majority of bot nets are created by people like my Aunt. She thinks she is safe because she uses some obscure malware and e-mail detection system that seems to have appeared like magic to rescue her from the perils of the net. However her windows 98 kernel has obviously been rooted and she does not even know it.

I keep getting spam traffic from her that is reassigned from a myriad of outlook express ex-emailers. I have told her that she will have to get her OS reinstalled but she just won't listen. I am afraid that the windows OS and the Microsoft way of computing has done little more than create a shit load of computer using zombies and little old ladies (like my aunt) who in blissful ignorance just keep up the status quo. The result of this blissful ignorance is that bot nets have become almost impossible to kill.

Re:Only high profit crime

[binaryspiral]

A criminal will work for the quick buck. BnE is great when lots of people are leaving their windows open and you are the only burglar, but once every one is on the BnE bandwagon, it's time to switch to mugging or extortion.

Like Patent trolling, DRM, or WGA.