Koobface Malware Traced To 5 Russians

New submitter theonlyholle writes "Naked Security, the Sophos IT security blog, has published an article about the authors of the Koobface malware that plagued Facebook users in 2008 and the investigation that led to their identification. Apparently the botnet was created by five Russians from St. Petersburg."

Comments

Re:Normally, I oppose botnets and other malware st

[NonUniqueNickname]

"Librum facium"? Your Latin skills deserve in faciem palma.

Re:Eastern European Malware

[cecom]

I come from Eastern Europe and I think that it is socially driven. Corruption is so prevalent in absolutely every aspect of life - from traffic tickets to simply buying something in the store. So "white collar" crime like this is socially acceptable.

It is most definitely not economically driven - in Eastern Europe there is a huge hunger for competent developers, so unless Russia is an exception (I doubt it), it is easy to find a legal well paying programming job.

Full disclosure: I left Eastern Europe a long time ago and I am not Russian, but I am extrapolating from my own country.

Re:Eastern European Malware

[mapkinase]

The factor is disregard for somebody else's property, starting from communal property and private property. Decades of communistic approach to property lead to generation of thiefs, when practically everybody had no moral qualms about stealing practically anything, especially badly guarded.

I remember the time when I first came to US, I was in the lab with postdocs like myself, from Soviet Russia, and one of them was quite excited about the discovery that one can manipulate the odometer to decrease the reading and not be penalized for a leased car.

Russians could be very moral and compassionate to other people, but the area of property is moral tabula rasa for Russians.

Stealing, breaking, damaging, vandalizing, wasting - all kind of things one can do with property in Russia, except for investing, saving, multiplying...