What a Hacked PC Can Be Used For

An anonymous reader points out that the Security Fix blog is running a feature looking at the different ways hacked/cracked computers can be abused by cyber scammers. "Computer users often dismiss Internet security best practices because they find them inconvenient, or because they think the rules don't apply to them. Many cling to the misguided belief that because they don't bank or shop online, that bad guys won't target them. The next time you hear this claim, please refer the misguided person to this blog post, which attempts to examine some of the more common — yet often overlooked — ways that cyber crooks can put your PC to criminal use."

Comments

Re:Hello, I'm "misguided"

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you scan it offline or online? As in, do you boot from external media (which you created using an uninfected PC) to run the scan, or do you do it on the machine?

My parents machine was dumping out spam (verified with wireshark) even though AVG said it was clean and updated. I installed other AV softs, same thing. I copied softs like stinger to external media, booted a PE disk, still clean.

I finally downloaded an .iso with AV built in on my linux box, burned it, and rebooted the infected PC with it. Almost every single EXE was infected. But as far as all the security softs on that machine could tell, it was clean as a whistle.

Re:They don't care

[cbiltcliffe]

This will only work if you're on cable, and don't use a router. And even then, I'd question it's reliability. After all...law enforcement isn't really known for being technologically savvy. Some of them are, certainly, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.

On DSL, on the other hand, you've got to send a username/password to connect.
Doesn't matter a hoot if you change your MAC address or not...the password still says who you are.

And you obviously don't know much about low level networking. If you have a WiFi router, then the only MAC address the ISP sees is the one of your router. They don't see anything on your local network. So your neighbour can tap in all they want, and your router MAC address is still the one going to the ISP.
MAC addresses stay on the local network segment.