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New Hampshire Man Sentenced To 7 Years For Robo-Calling Malware
alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World: "A New Hampshire man who made $8 million by installing unwanted dial-up software on computers and then forcing them to call expensive premium telephone numbers was handed down an 82-month sentence this week. Prosecutors say that between 2003 and 2007, Asu Pala and others put together a lucrative business by setting up premium telephone numbers in Germany — similar to the 1-900 numbers used in the US — and then infecting German PCs with software that would automatically dial the numbers for short periods of time." Do that many people still have modems attached?
Nowadays modems are really rare; it's hard to find one. My server has one connected, which I bought about seven years ago, just to receive faxes. Not easy to find a shop selling them back then; will be harder now. It has never been used for a data connection. Nonetheless they are still available. Dial-up internet is even still available.
This story started in 2003, when modem use was quite common at least in Europe. In 2001/2002 I worked for about half a year at the telephone help desk of a major Dutch ISP, dial-up was for many people the main way to connect to the Internet. I recall even a serious reorganisation of the telephone system to accomodate all those dial-up users. At the time probably still more dial-up users than ADSL or cable users. By 2003 dial-up must still have been very common. And people that switched possibly simply had their modem still connected. Indeed nowadays this kind of fraud would not work anymore.
What I encountered very often when talking to people was that they had multiple dial-in icons in their network settings. One from our ISP, sometimes one or two from a previous ISP, and a handful of icons that they didn't even realise are there. Most were porn dialers, installed by malicious sites (usually porn sites), that would try to dial expensive numbers. This sounds very much like what these people have been sentenced for.
Anyway it's not surprising that it worked in those years, as modems were simply a really common way to connect to the Internet. It wasn't fast but it worked, and it worked on existing infrastructure. Add to that the plethora of security issues in Win98 and WinXP and these things happened - and happened a lot.
The most remarkable part of this story, besides that such a common crime even appears on the /. home page, is that the culprits have been caught and sentenced.
Because if we start forcing people to work to pay for their crimes, before long it morphs into a slave program with people being convicted on bogus charges for the sake of their labor. This has been tried in parts of the US in the past, and it has been a problem. The people who control the system don't have close to enough integrity to stand that kind of conflict of interest.
Yes. While DSL, UMTS and DOCSIS are quite common in urban areas, there are still several areas (villages) where dual-channel ISDN is the fastest way to get into the net (2x 64 kBit/s), and many people in those areas still use analog modems (V.90) simply because ISDN lines have a higher monthly fee and dual channel ISDN doubles the costs of each internet connection.
Of course, there is also satellite internet access, but it is expensive, overloaded, slow (despite opposite claims of the operators) and has a high latency. Plus, you need a free line of sight to the satellite and the permission to install a(n additional) satellite dish from the owner of the house. LTE is the latest promise for fast internet access in non-urban areas, following WiMAX. WiMAX exists only in prototype areas, it still is not commonly available in Germany. LTE is only planned, no prototype area exists, and despite legal restraints to install LTE first in areas without high speed internet connections, the first prototype areas will be big cities.
Another reason to use a modem is the ability to send and receive faxes, as others already posted.
Costs for 0900 calls are very high compared to other numbers, and the 0900 owner can define how much is charged. There are two mutually exclusive limits: Either max. 3.00 EUR per minute, or max. 10.00 EUR per call independantly from the length of the call. (Source: http://www.teltarif.de/i/sonderrufnummern-0900.html) So if you use the second option (charge 10.00 EUR per call) and distribute a dialer that makes one-second calls to your 0900 number, you gain 10.00 EUR per second and call. Gaining 8,000,000 EUR (roughly approximating 1 EUR = 1 $) requires 800,000 calls. If you can make 10 calls before getting caught by the modem owner, you need only 80,000 users. If you can make 100 calls before getting caught, you need just 8,000 users.
ISDN users are even more attractive than modem users. The V.90 handshake needs about 10 to 20 seconds, and it is noisy due to the modem speaker. Plus, the V.90 modem blocks the phone line. So it is very likely that the dialer is found very fast. The ISDN handshake takes much less time, about a second, it is silent, and ISDN offers two lines, so you can still use your phone while your computer is busy wasting your money with one second calls to a 0900 line. If that goes unnoticed for one hour, and each call lasts four seconds total, you have 900 calls from one user, 9,000 EUR. Trick just 900 users into using your dialler for one hour on an ISDN line and you gain 8,100,000 EUR.
Tux2000
Denken hilft.