Slashdot Mirror
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."
And you don't even want to see my home directory when I'm freebasing Wormwood. Let's just say it's a good thing it's on a totally separate hard drive when I'm riding the green worm.
My work here is dung.
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
Does that mean the V1@GR@ I got from that nice on-line pharmacy was fake? O.O
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
You guys have GOT to stop reading my journal! Next thing you know slahdot will be have stories about hookers...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
It's a redirect from InformationWeek, a perfectly legit publication, to http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=156139&WT.svl=news1_1
Admittedly it's annoying; in fact the first attempt to go there crashed my browser.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
If you'd been reading your spam, you'd know they're called "chemists" now, and they sell "pilules".
And why is this? I worked for many months on med-high (recreational) doses codeine (an opiate) and diazepam, and I probably worked better on them than I do now I'm off of them.
Does other people getting "high" bother you? Have you ever taken any of the drugs that you've mentioned?
Placebo is the term for the sugar pill given to patients undergoing clinical trial. It is a specific form of fake drug. What these criminals are peddling is not just plain fake drug, not something guaranteed to cause no harm. So this should not be called a placebo.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Not likely. Spam is not about filling a need in the market, it's about greed. An "easy" way to make money. As an advertising model, spam itself doesn't stop being profitable just because the advertised product stops being profitable. Should the illegal pharmacists stop funding the spam, someone else will start. Way to miss the issue, friend.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
I know I, for one, would rather not have people in public that are doped up on morphine/vicodin/valium.
Tough. People already use drugs, they will always use drugs. Chances are you know an opiate addict and don't even know it.
And yes, advocating the imprisonment of people for something as benign as cannabis is very nazi-ish. I smoke pot every day. I also work full time, pay my bills, and generally contribute positively to society. I don't hurt people, I don't steal, etc. If you would assault and kidnap (arrest and imprison) me just for kicking back with a bowl after work, then *you* are the dangerous one.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is one class of drugs I would like to remain illegal, and that's antibiotics. It's bad enough that ill informed mommies take junior to the doctor when he has a virus and demands an antibiotic (doc, give 'em placebo).
But if you make antibiotics over-the-counter it won't be long before none of them work. Even needing a prescription for such drugs there are already way too many sntibiotic-resistant bacteria.
You should have the right to fuck your life up any way you want, but you damned sure shouldn't have the right to fuck mine up by making antibiotics useless. Legalizing them would do just that.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Just a heads up, but there are now roughly 416 generic prescription drugs available to you for only $4 at Walmart and several other chains are joining this trend. Several are also available in 90 day supplies for $10. This pricing is available to anyone regardless of having insurance or not. $4 that is it. The list of meds now also includes birth control and some breast cancer medications. So your theory on why people circumvent the system is seriously flawed.
The real draw to these online pharmacies are the drugs like Viagra and Cialis which are not available in a generic formula. What drives these sales is not the cost it is the embarrassment. Men do not want to go ask the family doctor for E.D. meds they would rather risk going online, picking some up in Mexico or going without. Interestingly enough their Dentist buddy or their vet could just as easily write them a script for any of the above legally.
When did I say arrest and imprison? How many people do you know who have been arrested just for using marijuana in a responsible manner?
There are plenty of people who claim that cops go around kicking in doors and beating the hell out of people just for smoking pot in their homes. But yet there is almost no evidence of that happening to recreational users.
The way that the laws are enforced for drugs are essentially the same as the way they are enforced for alcohol. Whether you chose to get drunk, stoned, or otherwise influenced by a substance, if you do it at home, your realistic chance of being arrested is zero. On the other hand, if you chose to do it at home, and then proceed out in public where your choices pose a potential danger to society, then your chances of being arrested climb dramatically.
Which is why I support leaving the laws alone.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If there were _not_ a "War on Drugs", would we see far less spam?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
> but you know the truth: unintentional DoS from the sheer volume of spam out there,
Oh god, don't remind me. Up until about 3 years ago, I ran my own mail server (DSL, fixed IP, old PC). One of the things I did was enable SASL authentication for SMTP (which requires logging in with a username and password before outgoing mail will be accepted for relay). Within a matter of months, spammers around the world figured out that I had a live SMTP server running on port 25. SASL AUTH or not, more and more spammers kept hammering away trying (unsuccessfully) to relay. My router's NAT table started to periodically overflow (crashing the router's firmware), and the endless incoming requests effectively were like a constant denial of service attack.
In retrospect, I could have probably gotten away with changing the SMTP server to a different port, but I was so fed up with the experience I ended up leasing a dedicated server for $30/month... partly, because once I knew what to look for, I noticed that I was ALSO getting hit by a staggering number of incoming http requests for various exploit-related URIs. The exploits themselves didn't bother me (I was running Tomcat as a standalone server), but on more than a few occasions I was getting hit with more than a hundred bogus http requests per minute.
Once I had my ISP change my IP address to a new one, my throughput more or less tripled, because I was no longer being DOS'ed 24/7 by bots, spammers, and worms. I pity anyone who has to maintain a live web/mail server today. ~10 years ago (when I used to wear both admin and developer hats at work) keeping a Linux server running was no big deal, and any halfway intelligent developer could do a decent part-time job of it. It was analogous to private security guards trying to keep kids from skateboarding in downtown parking garages. Now, it's more like trying to safeguard a business from looting during a riot.
Selling placebos as the real thing, or drugs that may contain the real thing (but in doses that are dangerous) is still illegal.
While the actual pills may not contain a substance that is "illegal", the manner in which they are presented is. Kinda like how alcohol is legal, but it can only be sold under certain conditions (and not to minors, etc).
Applies not only to anyone using a personal computer, but to companies, ICANN & others who "oversee" the Internet structure who should have been creating new structures to prevent these sort of things proliferating. It is not just drugs but a never-ending blast of promos. It is not like we haven't seen this coming for years. Where are the responsible ISPs, who should literally shut off any personal computer that is sending spam? Doing that alone, and dialing out China, Russia and others on email programs would severely limit the ability of these nogoods to do their work. Microsoft is part of the blame here. I still have a friend who's HP computer at home is buzzing with activity from a Bot (3 kids in the family), sometimes taking 70-80% of his CPU cycles. He knows he is infected. Why won't he reinstall the OS? He doesn't know how, and figures he would be in for days of work, and if he can't do it, he will just have to fork out for a new desktop. Intertia, fear, loathing, and no fear of retribution for running a bot compromised CPU are behind his activities. All the same things ICANN, Microsoft, ISPs, and others seem to have in abundance. Sheesh.
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 ]
When did I say arrest and imprison? How many people do you know who have been arrested just for using marijuana in a responsible manner?
You said leaving the current laws alone. If I were to take a joint with me to the park and enjoy it during a picnic, I'd stand a very good chance of being assaulted by a police officer. Hell, if I were to enjoy a joint in my own damn backyard during a BBQ, I'd stand a very good chance of being assaulted.
There are plenty of people who claim that cops go around kicking in doors and beating the hell out of people just for smoking pot in their homes. But yet there is almost no evidence of that happening to recreational users.
No, I don't claim that at all. But they do randomly search cars for no reason. They do flyovers with a helicopter and infrared cameras to catch people growing. They do send police into concerts looking for pot smokers. Pot smokers are persecuted in this country, and they don't care if you're responsible or not.
The way that the laws are enforced for drugs are essentially the same as the way they are enforced for alcohol.
Have you noticed that you can go out to just about any restaurant and have yourself a cocktail? Try doing that with cannabis.
Whether you chose to get drunk, stoned, or otherwise influenced by a substance, if you do it at home, your realistic chance of being arrested is zero.
This is where you get a little twisted. You are relying on selective enforcement of the law to provide justice. The law itself should be just. Punish people who actually hurt people, not people who you think might hurt someone.
What you are saying here is contrary to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty". It's worse even than "guilty until proven innocent". What you are saying here is that people who possess pot should be punished for a crime that hasn't been committed, and probably never will be committed. It's nothing less than advocating Pre-crime.
Does that not sound just a little bit Nazi to you?
On the other hand, if you chose to do it at home, and then proceed out in public where your choices pose a potential danger to society, then your chances of being arrested climb dramatically.
Except that proceeding out into public with a little herb poses negligible danger to anyone.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What a relief... it's pharmaceuticals, so I can go on buying my marijuana, cocaine, heroin and LSD over the interwebs. I'd hate to support hackers.
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.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
This isn't too uncommon, but it is pretty understandable. The DEA and other law enforcement agencies have thrown a number of doctors in jail for 'over prescribing' pain killers. Sure there are a number of instances where doctors do abuse their prescription writing powers, but even doctors who treat patients with legitimate chronic pain have been locked up.
This has created a bit of a fear to prescribe such drugs, and now you'll find a lot of doctors reluctant to give these drugs even if they are the best option. It really is sad when what is or is not considered 'over prescribing' is decided by a bunch of cops and lawyers instead of doctors.
This is bad, because some of the things the government says about drugs are true. This due more to random statistics than diligent research, I'd say- if you make 1000 completely random statements, some of them are bound to be true simply by chance. For instance, meth, crack and heroin really do have a great addictive potential, and the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose is disturbingly small. Unfortunately, kids simply don't listen when they're told this, because cops say the same things about weed.
Even worse, some kids actually buy into the propaganda. These are the kids who believe that illegal drugs are dangerous because they're illegal, so they huff paint cleaner and other "legal" drugs. These "legal" methods of getting high are actually more dangerous than heroin, but they don't carry the illegal stigma so kids don't see them as dangerous if they believe the drug prohibition propaganda.
I'd much rather see all drugs be made legal- ALL of them. Then sell them at convenience stores to adults in packages with certain ratings on the package. Addictiveness could be quantified (by independent medical professionals, not the government) and placed on the package. Also, the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose could be printed in big letters. The time to take effect could also be printed, so that people don't accidentally overdose thinking the first hit didn't work. This would increase government revenue through more taxes and less money spent on the DEA, destroy the black market and its associated violence, drastically empty our prisons of nonviolent offenders, restore faith in the police as a force to protect people rather than imprison them for "victimless crimes", and make it more difficult for kids to buy drugs. (Yes, more difficult. Children regularly report that it's more difficult to obtain alcohol than drugs, for the simple reason that most drug dealers don't ask for ID.) It would also help more drug addicts get treatment, because they'd no longer have to fear prosecution if they want to get treatment. Oh, and it would give us back a free society where citizens are treated as adults who can make their own decisions about their own bodies.
If you're looking for an objective information source regarding drugs, I highly recommend erowid.org. This website contains information about damn near every psychoactive drug in existence. Not only chemical information and physiological effects, but also specific legal information and many, MANY personal experiences.
Strangely enough, I find myself recommending the South Park episode about weed to anyone who wants a decent way to sum up the dangers of marijuana. After most of the episode centers around ridiculous propaganda, Stan's father eventually wises up and says: "Son, weed isn't going to make you a criminal. It will make you okay with being bored, though, and every day you spend stoned on the couch is one less day you could be learning a new hobby or developing a new skill." I found that very insightful. Frankly, I also liked the recent drug commercial where a stoner says "I smoked weed, and I didn't become homeless or start smoking crack. We just sat on my friend's couch... and sat... and sat... I'd rather take my chances outside, where it's dangerous."
This kind of honest approach would do wonders, in my opinion. And, yes, I'm a regular stoner- I just know how and when to put the drugs down and work on my physics PhD thesis (if you don't believe this, look at my history and read the posts I've written regarding quantum entangleme
Here is an interesting link regarding human/animal drug use. http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/600_pets.html
Oh my!
According to your logic, it's ok that Iran has the death penalty for gay people because it doesn't catch most of them, it's ok that Sudan stones women to death for having sex outside marriage, because it doesn't catch most of them.
If you are going to make a stupid argument, stand by it to it's stupid conclusion or shut your mouth. Answer all of what is put to you, not just the bits you can do easily, should people be arrested for obsessively eating chocolate?, for obsessively going on the internet?
having an unenforced law on the books and saying that is ok is dangerous, it gives the government a reason to arrest people they don't like at any time. Would you feel the same if coffee was illegal? knowing that if sheriff takes a dislike to you he could come round to your house at any time and find your coffee stash? Knowing that if you ever join a protest movement, the police could put you away for coffee possession?
You don't seem to understand why selective persecution is a bad thing, it's because they can at any time and for any reason change their mind, if they want to make a scapegoat for some social problem, they can just round up the drug users, if your neighbour doesn't like you for whatever reason, they could be prejudiced in some other way, they can call the cops to haul you away for smoking weed, there's dozens of reasons why they could suddenly change their mind and come and arrest you.
Oh and if people walking a bit funny down hte side walk is such a big inconvenience(I've been drunk as fuck sometimes, but I've never bumped into someone on hte way home on a busy street) are you going to ban dyspraxic people from going out on their own? what about fat people on their mobility scooters, their food addiction has made them interfere with my ability to walk down the street.
Fact is, you can't think of any reason why being stoned has a negative impact on others on it's own, sitting in the street, walking down the middle of the road, they are things people can do sober and you can be stoned off your face and do none of them at all. If someone blocks the pavement, arrest them for blocking the pavement, it is just as blocked if they are stoned or not.
Have some consistency and logic in your arguments, and stop going back on what you said whenever you are proved wrong.
have the courage of your convictions and say you think weed is evil and makes people into raping, robbing sociopaths, its what you have hinted at through all your posts, so why not just say it?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?