The Internationalization of Malware

Ant brings us a write-up from a former malware analyst about the difficulties in fighting malware as it expands beyond English-language targets and into societies with different standards for privacy and security. Quoting: "One of the most fascinating facets of the increasing internationalization of malware is the cultural assumptions around such software. What is considered malware in the US may be commonly accepted in China or Japan, and this is largely due to the society that it exists in. Anti-cheating rootkits are very common in games released in these countries. What is considered to be invasive in the North American or European world is acceptable there. These anti-cheating rootkits would hook into the kernel space in a very invasive way, and have the behavioral characteristics of malware such as hooking into the keyboard driver. This made it very difficult from a purely technical standpoint to distinguish them."

Comments

Define it

[Anonymous Coward]

Malware is supposed to do Bad Things to your computer/information. If it's hooking into the kernel, it may not necessarily be malware, per se. It may just be doing business in the entirely wrong place.

Considered to be invasive...bla bla bla

[sakdoctor]

Or is it lack of awareness. Add south Korea to that list because is currently seems acceptable to have about 10 useless browser bars attempting to take over and uninstall the competitors bar in internet explorer.

Awareness didn't come overnight in North American or European either.

Up front, or covert?

[petes_PoV]

The main differentiator between an invasive monitor and malware is whether the author (or organisation employing it) uses it covertly, or if they make the user aware of what will happen.

If a piece of software makes it clear, before you purchase it, that it will install monitoring software on your machine and/or it would phone home then that's one thing. You have the option of not buying it.

If this situation only becomes apparent after the package has been installed, then (IMHO) that's not an acceptance practice.

I'm sure it's true within countries, too

[grizdog]

While most people probably don't consider them malware, a lot of people find internet ads intrusive and obnoxious and we install popup blockers to get away from some of them. But the advertisers wouldn't pay for them if someone wasn't reading them and clicking on them.

More to the point, there is a huge difference in what people care about regarding their computers. Many of my friends think I "put up" with a lot because I use Linux and install things relatively methodically, always keeping control of my system. I think they "put up" with a lot, because they have no idea what is running on their computers and what the machines might be doing with their information.

It concerns me that the anti-privacy people have time on their side, because after a few more years, they will just point out how so many people haven't been enjoying much privacy anyway, so what's the big deal?

In other words...

[DrYak]

...a computer in Japan is just another appliance.

They buy it as they would buy a second TV set for the kitchen, or a vacuum cleaner or table-top cooling fan, etc.

Nobody in his/her right mind care of the stats of a vacuum cleaner, except complete nerds.

Computers are slowly drifting toward that situation.

GSM phone have already reached that point almost worldwide - the only thing most people care is if there's "Apple iPhone" written on it.
And there are often enough articles on /. about remote cellphone's mic tapping, remote GPS polling, etc... to show that there slightly more than "what's written on the case" about a phone.