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Study Links Storm Botnet's Growth To Illegal Drugs
talkinsecurity writes "Researchers at IronPort today published a study which claims to have found the 'smoking gun' that links the rapid growth of the Storm botnet to spammers that sell prescription drugs illegally over the Internet. The study shows that more than 80 percent of Storm-generated spam is advertising online pharmacy brands, and further investigation showed that spam templates, credit card processing, product fulfillment and customer support are all being provided by a 'Russian criminal organization' that operates in conjunction with Storm. This criminal organization recruits botnet spamming partners to advertise their illegal pharmacy Websites, which receive a 40 percent commission on sales orders. IronPort went as far as to do pharmacological testing on the products, and found that two-thirds of the drugs contained the wrong dosage of the active ingredient, and the rest were placebos."
No, really, computers are useful for business purposes, and illegal drug purveyors are running a business. Did people really think that computers would only ever be used for legal businesses? It is like an article that says, "New report on drug dealers using drinking water to prevent death by dehydration!"
Palm trees and 8
Someone should do what was done in the lead-up to the Iraq war (where Bush/Blair/Howard deliberatly made it seem like Saddam was a lot more of a threat than he really was) and come up with some evidence linking all this crap to terrorists. Then the US will have no choice but to do something about it :)
Plus it gives plenty of other useful info. We don't just find out that the business behind Storm is selling illegal drugs, but that there are some good reasons why these particular mail order sales are illegal - i.e. major variations in the dose and 1/3 of them containing no dose at all. Since plenty of people here on /. think the U.S.'s policy on mail order drugs is there just to prop up U.S. company's monopoly status, they obviously could use the information that there are some real problem cases that the law is attempting to address.
Who is John Cabal?
It's hard to imagine a legitimate scenario where someone would be forced to use spammers to provide their meds. As for the internet stock scams, or the Nigerian scam, only the greedy will apply.
All in all, I don't think you needed the disclaimer.
Normally I would agree with you
When I was in college I broke my wrist falling on some ice while doing laundry around 4am (long story, you know college...) anyway, i went to the hospital in all my dirty clothing & they refused to give me any pain medication for fear I was some hippie junkie (no kidding) just looking for a fix. Luckily my dad was head of ultrasound there & as soon as he showed up their attitude did a 180. I didn't even want the drugs, I'm allergic to opiates but the principle of the whole thing... The pain was pretty intense, who could I turn to for pain management when the hospital thought I was just some bum because I was in dirty clothes had I not had some "pull" there?
It was a pretty scary thought and still haunts me to this day.
Too bad I don't have points to mod you up. Instead, I offer this recent story from the Baltimore Sun about a trial that's going on right now. These folks started out with a legitimate professional pharmacy delivering prescriptions to local nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. The online drugs marked proved to be too lucrative, the drug of choice was hydrocodone. They're also in trouble over a lot of subsidiary issues like tax evasion. The genuine irony of this piece is behind the scenes. I recalled reading the article but not the exact date, so I used the Sun's search box with "internet drugs trial." The results came back just fine--along with a paid advert for "Canadian Online Pharmacy."
The people to be pitied in all this aren't the ones abusing pain meds. It's the middle-aged suddenly unemployed guy who takes meds for hypertension or the elderly person who's in the notorious "hole" in the middle of the Medicare drug benefit or the financially struggling young couple with a child who needs some lifesaving drug or other. Or, perhaps, the employed person whose health care benefit has shriveled to nothing.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
The most common practice is to sell expired medications with new packaging. Counterfeit medications are not as common as the costs associated with producing "good enough" facsimiles of the real medication are higher than illegally obtaining medications marked for destruction.
The addict may be shopping around for several physician in order to have enough prescriptions from all of them for his habit but spacing enough time between consultation at each one not to raise suspicions.
This strategy could work, but is tedious and costly. Getting those drugs on-line simplifies the process and cuts the doctor's cost out of the equation. Interestingly enough their Dentist buddy or their vet could just as easily write them a script for any of the above legally. What ? In the USA vets and dentist have the right to prescribe ED meds ?!?!?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
After smoking pot off and on since 1971 with no ill effects whatever, I'm not very damned likely to believe anything the government says about ANY drug.
Like the illegality itself, everything the government does concerning drugs is counterproductive.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Come on.. what kind of software security company does this ?? ... perhaps one being paid off by pharmaceutical companies to do exactly that.. highly suspect.
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