FBI Shuts Down Major Scareware Gang

Trailrunner7 writes "The FBI has made a major dent in the huge scareware and rogue antivirus problem, arresting two people and seizing dozens of computers, servers and bank accounts as part of a large-scale coordinated operation in twelve countries. The operation, which involved authorities in the United States, Germany, France, Latvia, the UK and several other nations, was designed to disrupt the scareware ecosystem that has been preying on users' security fears in an effort to scam them out of millions of dollars in licensing fees for useless or outright malicious software."

Comments

Now they've removed the bin.laden filter

[VIPERsssss]

...Echelon has more clock cycles available.

Re:Now they've removed the bin.laden filter

[causality]

...Echelon has more clock cycles available.

LMAO. That deserves some mod points but sadly the overlords at slashdot haven't consented to grace me with some in a while. I have excellent Karma so go figure.

I once asked Rob Malda about this and he was kind enough to explain it to me. It depends on a variety of things like how often you post; too much or too little and you don't get mod points so often. How new or old your account is also has a bearing on it. There's probably more to it than he explained to me but suffice to say it's not as simple as maintaining good karma. For example, some users get 15 mod points at a time while I have personally only received five at a time though I get them relatively frequently.

Back on topic, I have a mixed take on this. While I'm glad to see a legitimate use of police power to take down those who serve no purpose other than preying on others for their selfish gain, I don't see how this will fix the real problem. It seems like for each group they bust, a few more rise up to take its place. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they look at how and why this group got caught and try to avoid making the same mistakes so they can stand a better chance of getting away with it.

This has a social engineering aspect but otherwise follows all of the same principles of computer security. It is not practical to apprehend every offender and prevent every new offender from rising up to cause more damage. It simply cannot be done. What is difficult, but possible, is to harden the targets, to increase the cost of compromise. For social engineering and other forms of deceit, that requires that we value, encourage, and cultivate knowledge and critical thinking. For so long as there are many vulnerable people who continue to fall for these schemes, and thereby enrich and reward the predators with the money they seek, you will never truly solve this problem.

It's not a matter of fairness or who deserves what. It's a matter of actually understanding the problem. It is true that stepping on a poisonous snake does not really injure the snake; it is likewise true that death by snake venom is too high a punishment for such an act, that the punishment grossly exceeds the crime. You can try explaining that to the snake only to find that it cannot be reasoned with. Yet if you know you are marching through an area with a high population of such snakes, the wise wear protective boots. If you know the Internet is a hostile network with criminals eager to defraud you, the wise maintain an awareness of such, perhaps do a little study of security best practices, and are glad that the price of protecting themselves is so low.

Re:Now they've removed the bin.laden filter

[swb]

So if people were smarter, they wouldn't walk by the park and night which would keep them from being targets of mugging, which in turn will make muggers become more productive citizens?

I agree with the idea that capturing one group will result in a second group popping up, but the same is true with crime -- arresting people who commit $criminal_offense won't stop $criminal_offense from occurring.

I do believe, though, that there are a lot of people profiting on cyber crime who sit in the middle and make money off it, while being able to claim they aren't involved -- the banks, the credit card companies, the hosting companies, the ISPs who turn a blind eye and provide the air and water that criminals need to be criminals.

What I'd like to see are RICO prosecutions where the otherwise "legitimate" entities who claim ignorance get prosecuted. I think you'd quickly end up with a lot more self-policing by the passive beneficiaries.

I'd also like to see a little more regulation on the credit card side of things -- why can't I arbitrarily limit what countries or states my credit card is good in? If credit cards by default didn't work overseas -- you had to call 1-800 and get them enabled in the specific countries you wanted them to work in -- that would help, too.

If you can make it harder to charge a credit card overseas, wire transfer money, etc, you might make it harder to profit from these kinds of crimes.

well crap!

[uncanny]

Now who's going to fix the virus that a virus scanner on a porn-site-popup tells me that i have?

I can't believe this.

[Bobakitoo]

I can't believe they have shutdown Symentec. I am forwarding this to everyone!

Re:available

[TaoPhoenix]

Shutting down a two person operation = massive dent in the problem? How many hundreds of people were raided by copyright SWATs?

Let this be a warning

[countertrolling]

If you think offshore servers are safe from the long arm of US law, you're in for a big surprise.. It all looks good when they go after spammers and such, but next it will be anything the FBI, DEA, or DHS, or whoever considers a 'threat'..

Be sure to hide the roaches..

Symantec, you're next!!

[madhatter256]

Watchout Symantec, you're next on the FBI's list!!! Always bugging people that you need to be renewed, bugging people that their license will expire in 60 months and that it needs to be renewed immediately to stop that from happening. Letting most viruses go through undetected and infect the PC. Taking over the PC and making it difficult to get rid of by always encountering some sort of 'error' while uninstalling or leaving shit behind that allows it to reinstall itself (Norton 2004 heydays).

McAfee, you're next, too!!!

More info...

[nlewis]

Either I'm not seeing a lot of detail in the linked article, or it's just not there. This one has more info:

      BBC News - FBI targets cyber security scammers
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13887152