Seeking Competitive Advantage, For Malware

jc_chgo writes "Brian Krebs over at the must-read KrebsOnSecurity.com writes about the rivalry between two competing authors of nasty credential-stealing malware. The newer (SpyEye) can remove the older (Zeus) on any system it infects. Meanwhile, Zeus is so successful prices have gone way up for the new version. These 'crimeware kits' are freely available for purchase, and have enabled millions of dollars in thefts. The buyers of the kits prey primarily on small businesses by using wire transfers out of bank accounts. This is a problem that is only going to get bigger over time."

Comments

Let's Look At The Positives

[WrongSizeGlass]

There are positives to this. If one type of malware can handily defeat another type of malware I'm sure the A/V companies will be able to learn something from it (and up-charge their victims, er, customers accordingly).

There's also the new 'botwars' games that we'll be able to watch from the safety of our non-Windows computers.

Re:I am on my Windows machine you insensitive clod

[jon3k]

nice sig -- save for the fact that the "group" is composed of 90% men.

Re:I am on my Windows machine you insensitive clod

[Bodhammer]

nice sig -- save for the fact that the "group" is composed of 90% men.

You mean two of his fingers are female?

Malware competing with each other in the market...

[gzipped_tar]

...is still much better than the idea of government-owned, tax-paid malware.

Re:Queue The DRM Critics

[scolbe]

I wonder if either of these 'kits' infects the computer that runs it? Would the authors ever infect their customers?

oh, don't worry about that... that's just their handy, no fuss zero-click payment system.