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Perks & Paintball For Employees At Cybercrime, Inc.
Barence writes "Innovative Marketing Ukraine was in the business of churning out some of the world's most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses. As the company grew, it added a human resources department, hired an internal IT staff and built a call center to dissuade its victims from seeking credit card refunds. Employees were treated to catered holiday parties and picnics with paintball competitions. Top performers got bonuses as young workers turned a blind eye to the harm the software was doing. 'When you are just 20, you don't think a lot about ethics,' said one former Innovative Marketing programmer. 'I had a good salary and I know that most employees also had pretty good salaries.' The firm has been closed down after the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit seeking its disbandment in the federal court. But an examination of the FTC's complaint and documents from a legal dispute among Innovative executives offers a rare glimpse into a dark, expanding — and highly profitable — corner of the internet."
Funny, I did think about ethics when I was 20.
Then again, I wasn't a piece of scum.
LOL, sounds like fun. They're still assholes, though. Too bad really hardworking ethical employees get shafted world-wide. And... really, did they do more harm than some of the world-widely known software companies in the world?
He's either dodging the question, or he really didn't think about what he was doing? Most people in the malware authoring business probably at least understand the consequences of what they do, even if they don't care. Akin to these guys: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11476
Emotions! In your brain!
Those guys were just more transparent about their activities.
Of course the real irony here is that in a software development group that was very successful doing work that was not only legal, but benefited the public, we were treated like shit, and these guys were treated great.
Something managemant should think about, but never will.
They are amoral which is somewhat essential to the core goal of providing profit for the shareholders. This company is just an extreme example of this. I actually find the more interesting parts of the article are those that focus on the methods and such like this quote: ""You can install it by any means, except spam," says one affiliate recruiting site, earning4u.com, which pays $6 to $180 for every 1,000 PCs infected with its software. PCs in the US earn a higher rate than ones in Asia." The methods more than the perks are what to me makes the article interesting.
ACK
I'd totally work there
They are paid through electronic wire services such as Western Union, Pay Pal and Webmoney which can protect the identity of both the sender and the recipient.
I can see how they can do anonymous transfers with Western Union and I know nothing about Webmoney, but PayPal?
To fund a PayPal money transfer, you need a credit card or bank account. So, unless you have an accomplice in the banking industry, I don't see how you can be anonymous with PayPal.
"When you are just 20, you don't think a lot about ethics"
Really? I did.
What I suspect this person really means is: He was fully aware that what he was doing was unethical, but he liked the money. Saying that that he "didn't think" about the ethics is an attempt to excuse his behaviour.
"Thank you for your patience! We at Innovative Marketing take our work very seriously. We have operators standing by to blackmail you into submission! Please be patient and wait for the next representative, or we will hunt you down and steal your first born son! You wouldn't want that, would you?"
[operator, thick east European accent] Good morning! This is Vladamir from Innovative Marketing. We know who you are, we have stolen your identity. We trust you will do the right thing, and not report us. We know where grandma lives, and you wouldn't want grandma hurt, would you? heheheh
"When you are just 20, you don't think a lot about ethics"
of equal validity:
"When you are just 30, you don't think a lot about ethics"
"When you are just 40, you don't think a lot about ethics"
"When you are just 50, you don't think a lot about ethics"
etc...
people are ethical or they are not. age has nothing to do with it. but its a nice rationalization on his part. people usually blame the evil media, the evil liberals, the evil conservatives, their evil parents, etc.: age old tired variations on the theme "the devil made me do it"
everyone has rationalizations for why their own poor personal choices are actually not their fault. which is of course pure unadulterated bullshit: if you did, it's your fault. end of fucking story. as soon as you break that thought, the whole idea of personal responsibility and morality is nullified
so this guy is saying is just a phase he'll outgrow, no big deal. nice one, asshole
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hear is a new game for them Don't drop the soap!
Poverty and hard living in places like the Ukraine and Nigeria doesn't tend to encourage much empathy among scammers and phishers. People (like the OLPC guys) always talk about how bringing the internet to the third world is going to make lives better and all that. But they ignore the fact that a lot of those poor people are going to use this new-found freedom to scam those in the developed world, people who have a lot more resources than they do. Over time, this kind of activity can become normalized, enjoying quasi-legal and moral sanction (as was the case here).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The difference in ethics by working at some big company paying you to sell over-priced home loans that eventually collapse the global economy is what?
Next time, don't waste your money on perks. Buy a Senator instead.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's fascinating how many people have latched onto the ethics issue... It would be interesting to see how many of them have nothing but fully paid for or legally free software and music on their computers.
You know, I remember I was about 18 when I wrote a virus just for curiosity sake. (Yeah, I know, slow learner;)) Just for the reference, back then it meant the kind that copies itself at the end of executables (or for other viruses into the boot sector), rather than the modern day Internet worms.
It probably wasn't the most advanced virus out there, but it was a neat piece of assembly by _my_ standards, and I was pretty proud of it.
I actually considered releasing it into the wild, but basically... I dunno, something seemed _wrong_ with doing so. There was no way I could justify to myself doing something destructive to a lot of perfect strangers that had done me no wrong.
I didn't think of it as some formalized ethics system, or anything. Heck, I was almost allergic to even the idea of philosophy in any form. It seemed a pointless waste of time to sit and think about abstract artificial dilemmas, instead of doing something actually productive. Like code something. And I was quick to denounce anything that even remotely looked like artifficial and arbitrary social rules and conventions. But it just seemed wrong to do that anyway. Not because it conflicted with some abstract code or philosophy, but just it seemed wrong to do that.
I think in the end that that _is_ ethics.
So it seems hard for me to swallow a justification like in the summary along the lines of, "hey, at 20 you don't think about ethics." On the contrary, I would expect anyone who got to 20 to be perfectly capable of asking themselves "is it right to do this?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Capitalism much?
That's why it's called organized crime. Anotehr example is the architypical Sicilian Mafia. They had accountants, caporegimes (aka 'executive managers'), and even compliance control officers (aka 'button men').
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I thought a lot more about ethics when I was 20 then I do now.... of course I was also a liberal... ahhhh how things change!
p.s. Just joking... but only about one part.
Same story different twist
You know, if 20 year olds were really that irresponsible and didn't even think about the implications of what they're doing, that would be a pretty scary world. In a lot of the world we trust people with a lot of stuff at 18 years old, which is even lower than 20. We trust them to vote for a start. We trust them enough to give them a loaded weapon and let them into the army. Etc.
The thought that we could have millions of 18 year olds with a loaded assault rifle in some guard tower, and unable to even think about the consequences of their actions, is pretty scary thought.
But I doubt that it's like that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm so sick of these slaps on the hand.
A few high profile individuals get long jail sentences, but larger organizations don't get prosecuted well if at all. In many cases its a fine that is largely built into their cost structure or executive compensation packages.
We need these organizations prosecuted under RICO laws, treating them as what they are: organized crime. Not only will this result in severe punishment, we can drag into the prosecution these otherwise "legal" entities supplying services and operational credibility to an organized crime entity.
Once these entities have a few executives doing a minimum Federal 20 and their organizations' names dragged through the mud, the rest of them will think twice about getting involved with the dark side. It's a lot harder to run an online scam entity when you are forced to only accept cash payments and have a hard time buying decent hosting services.
It's almost like FBI/DOJ doesn't see this as a crime or are so ignorant that they don't bother.
What we didn't nuke these people from orbit? U.S. didn't have them killed in a covert operation? Or even corporate America send a private army in to eliminate the competition? Figures slimeballs protect slimeballs.
This may be a bit nit-picky but this bit in the article rubs me the wrong way:
"It's sort of a plague," said Kent Woerner, a network administrator for a public school district in Beloit, Kansas, some 5,500 miles away from Innovative Marketing's offices in Kiev. He ran into one of its products, Advanced Cleaner, when a teacher called to report that pornographic photos were popping up on a student's screen. A message falsely claimed the images were stored on the school's computer.
"When I have a sixth-grader seeing that kind of garbage, that's offensive," said Woerner. He fixed the machine by deleting all data from the hard drive and installing a fresh copy of Windows. All stored data was lost.
Stephen Layton, who knows his way around technology, ended up junking his PC, losing a week's worth of data that he had yet to back up from his hard drive, after an attack from an Innovative Marketing program dubbed Windows XP Antivirus. The president of a home-based software company in Stevensville, Maryland, Layton says he is unsure how he contracted the malware.
But he was certain of its deleterious effect. "I work eight-to-12 hours a day," he said. "You lose a week of that and you're ready to jump off the roof."
Here we have 2 supposedly technically proficient individuals who apparently had no clue how to recover data from the hard drives of computers before reinstalling the OS. Hell, even if you don't have a second computer on which to mount the infected drive in order to simply copy the data (absurd for a school admin, let alone a software developer) you could do a parallel install onto the same drive.
Let's get this right, folks: recovering the data should be paramount in most cases. There is no excuse for simply deleting data because you're too lazy a tech to back it up first. It simply is not that difficult.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Was their "corporate headquarters" located beneath the crater of an extinct volcano, or did they have their board of directors meetings in Italian restaurants?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I'm not defending what this Ukrainian company did by any means - but it strikes me as somewhat hypocritical that this company gets shut down yet billionaire Russians can happily buy English football clubs, send their kids to the best private schools in the UK and snap up second homes in Turkey and other parts of Europe.
Are you *REALLY* trying to tell me that after years of Communist rule and oppression, the money suddenly being wielded by all these "nouveau riche" Russians *ISN'T* dirty money?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
As someone who had acquaintances in this "company" I should say that they were completely aware of the consequences of their actions.
...he's not the only one that doesnt think about ethics much. To quote from a well known speech:
"The, uh, ethics of, uh, business....can be summarised in... Yeah, um... See... Ethics are, uh... You know, the... the thing about ethics...
Aagh!
That question was not fair!
That was not in the reading."
not WHY
if i shoot you in the head, an observer can certainly fall into the trap you've described in imagining WHY i've shot you in the head. however, who cares WHY i shot you in the head: there's a hole in your head, regardless. and therefore i can be judged, for shooting you in the head, as committing a crime, no matter WHY i did itt
likewise, WHY this asshole engages in cybercrime may be a complex and nuanced subject matter. and its important to explore that. however, the bottom line is, he engaged in cybercrime. that is all that is needed to know to pass judgment on him: he's an asshole
my observation about personal accountability and morality only depends upon someone trangressing against someone else. your observation about fundamental attribution error deals with WHY someone transgresses, which is an important subject matter, but does not in any way change the fact that someone chose to transgress against someone else, and therefore has committed a crime, and therefore deserves to be condemned and punished, regardless of WHY they did it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a rare glimpse into a dark, expanding — and highly profitable — pwner of the internet.