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Researchers Hijack Storm Worm To Track Profits

Posted by Soulskill on from the storm-chasers dept.

An anonymous reader points out a story in the Washington Post, which begins: "A single response from 12 million e-mails is all it takes for spammers to turn annual profits of millions of dollars promoting knockoff pharmaceuticals, according to an unprecedented new study on the economics of spam. Over a period of about a month in the Spring of 2008, researchers at the University of California, San Diego and UC Berkeley sought to measure the conversion rate of spam by quietly infiltrating the Storm worm botnet, a vast collection of compromised computers once responsible for sending an estimated 20 percent of all spam." The academic paper (PDF) is also available. We've previously discussed another group of researchers who were able to infiltrate the botnet for a different purpose.

5 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Double standards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How come they don't track down the IP addresses of infected computers and inform the users their computer is compromised? It seems these researchers also are getting a kick out of the botnet at the cost of the victims.

    1. Re:Double standards? by darkside_al · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because it's useless, most probably, that user in one hour will enter another p0rn site and get infected again. The big problem in securing home computers is user behavior, doesn't matter that you put a lot of warnings, he will hit install in a sec if is searching for pr0n.

    2. Re:Double standards? by Erikderzweite · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or they could change the worm to format hard disks on infected machines -- once done, a PC cannot send spam till reinstall. And this time, the user will be a bit more careful about PC security.
      Problemo solved!

  2. Re:HMM... by HexaByte · · Score: 5, Funny

    They must be really smart. After all, how are they able to figure out how it is that I'm in need of a bigger schlong, can't get it up w/o viagra and need a new Rolex at bargain prices and I'm looking for a Russian wife. I mean, what kind of research have they been doing to target me perfectly?

    --
    HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
  3. Re:HMM... by aaron+alderman · · Score: 5, Funny

    You post on Slashdot?