Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon and GoDaddy Are the Biggest Malware Hosters

Posted by Unknown on from the spin-up-an-extortion-image dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The United States is the leading malware hosting nation, with 44 percent of all malware hosted domestically, according to Solutionary. The U.S. hosts approximately 5 times more malware than the second-leading malware-hosting nation, Germany, which is responsible for 9 percent of the detected malware. The cloud is allowing malware distributors to create, host and remove websites rapidly, and major hosting providers such as Amazon, GoDaddy and Google have made it economical for malicious actors to use their services to infect millions of computers and vast numbers of enterprise systems."

76 comments

  1. no way the biggest hosts by maliqua · · Score: 5, Funny

    also host the most malware

    mind blown

    1. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Arrogant-Bastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your comment is funny, but misses the point about economics of scale.

      Amazon, with its immense resources, should be one of the cleanest hosts on the planet. They can afford, using their spare change, to staff a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people. The budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. And with the right people, suitably empowered, they could keep their operation nearly free of malware, phishing, spam, and other forms of abuse. They're far better positioned to do this than many smaller operations, who couldn't possibly afford it.

      But they haven't. Why not? Is it because they don't know? Unlikely. Of course they know. Is it because they don't know how to address it? Equally unlikely. Of course they do. They have some smart people on staff. No, they know what the problem is AND they know how to fix it.

      They just don't want to.

      Because even as (relatively) small as those costs would be, it's still cheaper for them to externalize them to the entire rest of the Internet, and let all of us deal with it. So rather than taking professional responsibility for their own operation, they've decided to just blow it off. After all: who's going to make them?

      I would say the same about GoDaddy, but it's not true. They actively support, encourage, and endorse spam, malware, phishing and every other form of abuse. They have from the beginning, only their method of lying about it has changed. (And don't forget GoDaddy's own history of self-promoting spam.) But once again: who's going to make them do anything differently?

      Until operations are held accountable for their actions -- which is something that we USED to do on this network, a long time ago -- most won't bother. And that is, in large part, why problems like spam and phishing and malware are epidemic.

    2. Re:no way the biggest hosts by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      GoDaddy I can see, but Amazon? They just store data, which is likely heavily encrypted before it's ever uploaded. How can Amazon know what's on their servers that they didn't put there themselves?

      I also don't understand how "the cloud" storage matters at all, and I even RTFA which wasn't much more informative than the summary. Maybe you can explain it?

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    3. Re:no way the biggest hosts by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      Never credit conspiracy when stupidity will do.

      You can get in and out of a lot of providers with a credit card or less. No one wants to be the first to use a secondary auth to protect integrity. Worse: providers like Tumblr use Amazon storage as back-fill and more. So does Amazon police Tumblr?

      I believe your accusations against GoDaddy might be libel or worse; they're not actively seeking to do what you accuse them of, but they're not inhiibiting it, either. IANAL, but you might consider that they might be immoral, rotten citizens, and loose-with-rules, but then, so is the NSA.

      Some of my friends believe that Windows is malware..... that aside, I want to know much much more about how that number was achieved, not that I don't believe it, rather, calling something malware is nebulous.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    4. Re:no way the biggest hosts by tranquilidad · · Score: 3

      "Amazon, with its immense resources,"

      Amazon, on sales of $2.98 Billion for the 12 months ending September 30, 2013, had net income of $130 million.

      You say the budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. How about putting a hard number on it?

      There's a difference between a company being big and having "immense resources" to spend on staffing "a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people."

      Generally speaking, Amazon has been happy incurring a lot of losses in their bid for world domination. You may disagree with their allocation of resources as a company but it's difficult to conclude they have immense, unallocated resources sitting by and "they just don't want to" fix the problem.

      I'm curious as to what you think the solution is that would be so easy for their smart people to fix.

    5. Re:no way the biggest hosts by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Informative

      They can afford, using their spare change, to staff a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people.

      You think that the solution to this problem is a 24-hour abuse desk? Isn't that, by nature, a reactive solution instead of a proactive solution? This comes with the turf. When Amazon allows their customers to quickly and easily set up new virtual servers and things like that, this is going to happen. Unless they are actively scanning all files and data that go through their network to block things (and even that is not a full solution), we are going to continue to see the "cloud" malware sites. These are sites that pop up and maybe they only exist for a day or two, or a few hours, before they get shut down, but in that time they've done what they were supposed to do and once they go down another one pops up. A place that people can call to report malware is not going to solve that problem.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    6. Re:no way the biggest hosts by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course they make money. Plain and simple: never credit consipacy where sloth was the problem.

      Yeah, they gain by being sloppy. But there's not a single law enforcement entity that gives a flying fleep, either. Do you see the FBI jumping in to save the day? Har. CIA? I'm ROFL. Justice Dept? ho ho ho. FTC? Huh?

      But you didn't tell me: how do you know what's malware and not, so that a judge doesn't throw out a warrant or an order? And you didn't tell me: what kind of secondary auth is going to be acceptable? And you didn't tell me how they're going to police it-- parse incoming streams? Audit what are supposed to be private sites? With what? Updated with what?

      Grow up.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    7. Re: no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You just upload and your malware is ready to be linked to millions with no maintenance on your part. Also keeps you from exposing yourself by hosting on your own server. Also makes it trivial to migrate to a new domain when you get shut down. All you have to do is upload the same template to a new host. And it won't get bogged down even if you had hundreds of domains(hopefully).

    8. Re:no way the biggest hosts by cerberusti · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Amazon does control spam to at least some extent. They sent me an e-mail asking about it when one of the servers I have there started sending e-mail.

      They asked me to describe my use case and set a new limit on outgoing messages.

      Serving malware is probably difficult to do much about. I doubt they can directly scan servers for it (for a variety of reasons) and it would be difficult to distinguish from normal web traffic (especially if encrypted.) This probably means they need to wait for a problem before they can do something about it.

      I suppose they could require more information about their customers, or include a waiting period on servers... but nobody does that, and in my opinion it would be unreasonable to require it of them.

      --
      I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
    9. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my problem is this- when you report the abuse to Amazon (or GoDaddy, or Google), the response time to get the malicious content removed is much, much worse than response times at small providers, by orders of magnitude (even a lot of providers in Russia!, ffs!)

      source: doing the abuse stats for many large FIs and other victims... I call them SlowDaddy :)

    10. Re:no way the biggest hosts by hackus · · Score: 2

      It is more profitable to accept the malware business than it is to staff people.

      -Hack

      --
      Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    11. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your analysis is correct, but I think it's in fact even worse: Why spend money to remove a certain part of your customers - that can be paying customers.

      Yes, by not fighting against all those evil people who host stuff that annoys others but not the hosters operation - the hosters are making money. From a business point of view someone who hosts an illegal operation is just like someone who hosts a legal operation as long as the illegal one has no other negative impact on your business they are just the same.

    12. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Arrogant-Bastard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are a large number of reasonably well-understood methods for dealing with this.

      First, you have a working RFC 2142 role account address: abuse@ your domain. You pay attention to what shows up there. You reply promptly. You engage. After all, if someone is doing your job for you and doing it on THEIR dime, the least you can do is take advantage of it. Moreover, if you manage to do this reasonably well, word will get out, you'll earn the respect of your peers, and they will reward you with more reports -- again, doing your work for you for free.

      Worth noting is that Amazon makes it nearly impossible to communicate with their abuse desk and fails to respond to reports in any way, let alone a timely one. And it's well known that GoDaddy frequently forwards them to the abusers.

      Second, you pay attention to netflows. If a virtual host instance is opening up TCP connections on port 25 to a kazillion hosts/hour, then it's spamming. Any kind of perfunctory monitoring will spot this and a hundred other similar things in real time.

      Third, you pay attention to who's behind the incidents. If you don't, then they'll just sign up over and over and over again. So you work to avoid that, by looking at the who, what, where, when patterns -- and you ban repeat offenders. This isn't watertight, of course -- but it doesn't need to be. If you raise the bar high enough, they'll just go somewhere else, which reduces your workload and lets you focus more tightly on what's left.

      Fourth, you look at usage patterns. Most web sites do NOT display global usage patterns, particularly those which are connected to a domain registered yesterday. (Think about it.) If you observe that, then something's up: it might be legitimate. It's almost certainly not. The same thing applies to other services and other protocols.

      Fifth, if you're Amazon, you have a highly paid legal staff. Use them. Smack the crap out of a few particulaly egregious offenders in court. Make it noisy so that everyone else knows you're doing it. Again, this doesn't have to be watertight; it just has to discourage miscreants.

      Finally (and I'm stopping here for brevity, there's a lot more), do all this publicly. Encourage your peers to do the same. Challenge them. Raise the collective bar, not just your own. Cooperate with your competitors.

      All of this costs money. Not a stupid amount of money, but it does cost. Which is why it almost never gets done (see previous post).

    13. Re:no way the biggest hosts by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      It is more profitable to accept the malware business than it is to staff people.

      Far more profitable. actually. Spammers and such often pay substantially more for service so they can do their business while the hosting company turns a blind eye.

      It's called Pink contracts. ISPs naturally hate to reveal what spammers and such REALLY pay them (hint: it's a good premium).

    14. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My friend, you are living in a delusional world.

      You say, they know how to fix it? Whaaat? What is this magical "fix" you speak of? It certainly isn't an abuse desk.

      What you are saying is equivalent to saying that people that build roads and cars should be held accountable for bank robberies (and other crimes), if the thieves used a car on those roads to get to and from the scene of the crime. And that, somehow, a 24x7 "road abuse hotline" will fix the problem???

      Please stop posting on slashdot, you are corrupting the world.

    15. Re:no way the biggest hosts by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      Until operations are held accountable for their actions -- which is something
      that we USED to do on this network, a long time ago -- most won't bother.
      And that is, in large part, why problems like spam and phishing and malware
      are epidemic.

      Here you go wrong with your argument.

      We DON'T want an ISP to police their network, do we? Why would an ISP have to be responsible for what users do with their network? Do you want them to police against possible copyright infringement, and block torrents, as well? Do you want them to read your messages, to make sure you don't post anything offensive on the networks?

      All along we have been arguing for net neutrality. Just give us the connection, and let us decide what data we pass over that connection. And let the end user be responsible for their actions.

      Now the enforcement of anti-spam and anti-phishing laws is notoriously difficult on the Internet, partly thanks to the international nature of the network, and ISPs have the right to sell to whoever they want, and to stop selling to whoever they don't want any more, which could very well be in response to complaints.

    16. Re: no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Have you ever used AWS? You set up an instance, configure it and install your malware distribution app, save a snapshot in working state, and then share the AMI with as many accounts as you can create. One goes down, the next goes up, all within geographically distributed load balancers. I would imagine if you have enough AWS accounts you could keep a large enough pool to avoid detection at all. Hell, they even offer CLI tools that can do most if not all of this from a script.

      Disclaimer: I've never hosted any malware on AWS, but I work with it every day and know how capable it is to automate what would normally be a very manual process.

    17. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Amazon, with its immense resources, should be one of the cleanest hosts on
      the planet. They can afford, using their spare change, to staff a 24x7 abuse desk
      with very senior people. The budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. And with
      the right people, suitably empowered, they could keep their operation nearly free of
      malware, phishing, spam, and other forms of abuse. They're far better positioned
      to do this than many smaller operations, who couldn't possibly afford it. .

      And I can't block Amazon, too much comes through their cloud.
      Nor can I block deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com and a new one that's shown up sea09s01-in-f28.1e100.net both a caching services.

      Had to laugh checking I found: unknown-68-142-253-x.yahoo.com; Whois had it, now I must block.
      Name Server: ns5.yahoo.com
      Name Server: ns1.yahoo.com
      Name Server: ns4.yahoo.com
      Name Server: ns3.yahoo.com
      Name Server: ns2.yahoo.com

      So many sites to block only so many will my system take, up until last month my Win7 had no problem with my 144173 line, 4.3K HOSTS file.
      Now nothing but problems, yes the DNS client is disabled.

    18. Re:no way the biggest hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They just don't want to.

      Because even as (relatively) small as those costs would be, it's still cheaper for them to externalize them to the entire rest of the Internet, and let all of us deal with it

      This on top of the fact that the spammers and other abusers are paying customers of Amazon, so removing them would incur costs while diminishing revenue.

      Hope the USA is a proud #1, once again.

    19. Re:no way the biggest hosts by jdogalt · · Score: 1

      Ecuador answered your question a few comments away- http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4671761&cid=45967943
      "
        Imagine if instead of malware you attempted to host copyrighted content on Amazon or GoDaddy or whomever else. Immediate takedown of the content and people coming after you. If you host malware on the other hand, meh, as long as Amazon gets paid they can host it without getting into trouble.
      "

  2. Expected by kamapuaa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Spinning this as a national issue is like saying "California has far more car accidents than Rhode Island." Of course it's true, but the US is far larger than (say) Germany, and has the largest hosting providers in the world. It would be a great surprise if the US wasn't in the lead.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    1. Re:Expected by Infiniti2000 · · Score: 1

      So, is it your assumption that size is directly responsible for the malware? Why can't a large hosting company also institute the best protection mechanisms to reduce their malware content? GoDaddy I can see not giving a crap, but Amazon should do some proper management to reduce this problem.

    2. Re:Expected by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3

      The assumption that "size is directly responsible for the malware" has been the excuse made by every Microsoft advocate ever to walk the face of the earth.

    3. Re:Expected by trongey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So, is it your assumption that size is directly responsible for the malware? Why can't a large hosting company also institute the best protection mechanisms to reduce their malware content? GoDaddy I can see not giving a crap, but Amazon should do some proper management to reduce this problem.

      Do you realize how much business they would lose if they did that?
      You can't just kick off all your best customers.

      --
      You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
    4. Re:Expected by fyec · · Score: 1

      I agree with you, but I wonder if there is something that Amazon et al might be able to do about it. Would it be too cost/performance prohibitive to scan for known malware before a site is allowed to go live? Is that technically infeasible or are there confidentiality issues that prevent Amazon from doing that?

    5. Re:Expected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed, some measure of malware per hosted site would be much more meaningful.

    6. Re:Expected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mine is bigger than yours.

    7. Re:Expected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A few years ago, wasn't Russia the undisputed king of malware hosting, at something like 80%+?

    8. Re:Expected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So now Slashdot wants webhosts to censor their customers' data?

    9. Re:Expected by Bramlet+Abercrombie · · Score: 1

      In soviet Russia malware hosts you?

    10. Re:Expected by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, China and India - the biggest countries in the world in population, and among the biggest in land area, are not even mentioned. India, known for it's many IT professionals, and China, evil evil China, known for it's hackers and crackers and general evilness when it comes to computer security. Nor is Russia, home to many prolific Internet criminals.

  3. Once we get over by Kardos · · Score: 1

    this strange idea that blindly running remotely fetched code is a good idea, "malware" problems will become sparse.

    1. Re:Once we get over by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

      Yep. Exactly. Mine is not THE most locked down computer in the world, but nothing runs without my explicit permission. Nothing downloads without my explicit permission. Nothing comes from third party sites, without my explicit permission. It gets a little irritating sometimes. Popup reminders, asking me if I really want to permit application X to run code from site Y. But, in the long run, it's worth it. I always get the opportunity to block something that I don't think is right.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  4. Re:Sweet, I block both ashole companies entirely. by netsavior · · Score: 3, Informative

    so you don't use Pinterest, Reddit, Foursquare, Spotify, Adobe, Etsy, IMDB, PBS, Netflix, or Yelp?

    Wow. Such internet. Much isolationism. Very consumer.

  5. sigh, all the innovation has gone elsewhere by swschrad · · Score: 2

    we host the most sites, but all the big hacks and l337 hax0rz are from other countries. just shows to go ya, we have lost the innovation edge in the US, outclassed by WhateverStan. I am so embarassed...

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
    1. Re:sigh, all the innovation has gone elsewhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate malware. Should be called bad-ware.

    2. Re:sigh, all the innovation has gone elsewhere by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      "Mal... 'Bad'. In the latin." - River Tamm

  6. popn size by minstrelmike · · Score: 4, Funny

    Alert. Largest subpopulations of a population have the most parasites.
    The longest books tend to have the most typos.
    Enquiring minds want to know why.

    1. Re:popn size by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, they don't want to know why, so much as how to reduce those problems.

      Which can include knowing why, but it's not the ultimate goal.

    2. Re:popn size by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. But the USA does not have the highest population size...

    3. Re:popn size by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

      That seems to depend on your definition of "population". I think it's been established that the US hosts more of almost everything than any other country. For the population of "internet facing servers", it seems that the US may have the highest population in the world. If not, we certainly rank up there alongside the highest. Who might have more than the US?

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:popn size by egcagrac0 · · Score: 1

      Is there a worldwide census of internet connected servers?

  7. This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by urbanriot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I often interact with large companies' IT departments and the general ID is to completely block all Amazon EC2 servers to prevent spam, malware attacks and access to filter bypass services like Ultrasurf, regardless of the possibility of legitimate sites hosted on Amazon. Occasionally they'll make exceptions for port 80 but the idea is basically, "since Amazon is complicit in hosting so much malicious or nefarious crap on the internet, just block Amazon."

    1. Re:This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by urbanriot · · Score: 1

      Clearly there's a job opening for a grammer nazi in my life.

    2. Re:This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And why not? If you don't have a business purpose with an Amazon site, why wouldn't you block them? Same goes for China/Romania/Slovakia/Russia, if you have no business there or on any subset of those places, why aren't you blocking that by default until the day you decide you DO need to go there, and unblock them specifically for that purpose? It's just a security-over-unreasonable-convenience concern. What's the downfall for 99% of businesses/users? None really.

      Anyone who complains about netflix not working gets a second glance. This is a business, and netflix has a horrible streaming selection anyway.

    3. Re:This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by jratcliffe · · Score: 1

      Clearly there's a job opening for a grammer nazi in my life.

      Do you also have budget for a Spelling Stalinist?

    4. Re:This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by sjwest · · Score: 1

      We have been 'probed' by amazon, there abuse report standards would seem to indicate i have to run wireshark or a equivalent tool from the whois.

      Comment: All abuse reports MUST include:
      Comment: * src IP
      Comment: * dest IP (your IP)
      Comment: * dest port
      Comment: * Accurate date/timestamp and timezone of activity
      Comment: * Intensity/frequency (short log extracts)
      Comment: * Your contact details (phone and email) Without these we will be unable to identify the correct owner of the IP address at that point in time

      So they do not have to do anything Shady.

    5. Re:This is why company's block Amazon EC2. by Indy1 · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Spamazon's EC2 garbage servers are firewalled on my servers. Spamazon ignores and /dev/null's abuse complaints, so I nuke all their EC2 ranges.

      Same with Spamdaddy.

      Run a network sewer, get firewalled. Only way to protect your own network.

      --
      Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
  8. Class action lawsuit time by cyberspittle · · Score: 1

    Highly unlikely, but we need Amazon and GoDaddy to police their customers.

    1. Re:Class action lawsuit time by game+kid · · Score: 1

      Enjoy your one-week domain name free-trial settlement coupons.

      (Not transferable to other_registrar, of course.)

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:Class action lawsuit time by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

      While we're at it, let's start holding screwdriver manufacturers responsible when burglars use them to break into houses...

  9. News at 11 by wbr1 · · Score: 0

    Elephants drop largest turds of any land animal. (Except our project manager. I swear he slings shit everywhere).

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  10. Re:Sweet, I block both ashole companies entirely. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "very consumer" ? - Yelp, lol.

    I'm reallllly missing out on "the world" because I think most of those are avoidably useless.

  11. Re:Sweet, I block both ashole companies entirely. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, FUCK!, nope, nope, nope.

    What's your point with the "Wow. Such internet. Much isolationism. Very consumer." dig?

  12. Kudos to Microsoft! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This just proves Microsoft Azure is by far the best hosting environment. Thank the sky wizards there is a company that cares and respects users!

    Choose Microsoft. Be successful.

  13. So what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >The cloud is allowing [anyone] to create/host websites
    In other news, pantyhose and gloves are allowing criminals to mask their identity.

  14. Well, you can spin it as a national issue... by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I mean, the whole problem is the legal framework, which is focused on dealing with the wrong issues. Imagine if instead of malware you attempted to host copyrighted content on Amazon or GoDaddy or whomever else. Immediate takedown of the content and people coming after you. If you host malware on the other hand, meh, as long as Amazon gets paid they can host it without getting into trouble.
    When I say it is a national issue, I don't mean it is only a US issue. It is a national issue for every country that writes the laws that corps ask for. Well, of course, it is the only country that I know off where corporate bribes are institutionalized, but that's another story.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  15. Re: Sweet, I block both ashole companies entirely. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Forced dogecoin meme. Much lame.

  16. Yep by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    Amazon operates on very thin margins. This is partially because they want to give customers a good price, which means they don't make a lot of profit per sale. It is also because they reinvest their profits in their business, buying more infrastructure, that kind of thing.

    They are not like Apple, just hoarding tons of cash, they don't actually have a tone of money left over.

    1. Re:Yep by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      They are not like Apple, just hoarding tons of cash, they don't actually have a tone of money left over.

      Companies like Apple and Microsoft make so much money that they simply don't know what to spend it on. They hoard out of sheer necessity. Google has a similar problem, but they're a tad more creative when it comes to spending money (hence the robotic cars and other hobby projects you see coming out of that company).

    2. Re:Yep by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      Actually they horde because the bulk of that cash is stuck overseas and if they brought it back to corporate to use it would get taxed and they don't want to pay the taxes. This is why there have been pushes for repatriation taxes that would be at a lower rate than the usual 35%. But to do that would be just encouraging more tax dodging.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    3. Re:Yep by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      That argument would only work if there would be no ways to spend money outside of the US. Yet, contrary to what you (and many others from the US) seem to be thinking, there's actually a whole world out there, with plenty of opportunities to develop new business.

  17. Welcome to 1999 by nobuddy · · Score: 2

    reacting to an increase in mail traffic from a known mail server? Spam has used botnets and distributed sending for a decade. Only the total noob mom-and-pop shop tries to direct mail spam anymore.

    Perhaps if they watched for more modern malware signatures instead they would be more effective.

  18. Censorship? no by nobuddy · · Score: 1

    There is a definite line between monitoring for malware and censorship. hunting down and burning the malware at the stake is a plus, not a detractor.

  19. Entitlement is rampant. by nobuddy · · Score: 2

    We blocked facebook a couple of years ago. the wailing and gnashing of teeth was everywhere.

    It went away rather rapidly when we offered to open access on a per-person basis with a request, signed by management, as to what their business need for facebook was. Same with streaming radio and video sites.
    When your allocated bandwidth for a site is operating at a constant 80% or more, and 90% of THAT is recreational/entertainment sites something has to change. They bitched, but real business traffic began working properly again. Satellite offices for the energy sector tend to have very limited internet options. hell, one is still rocking a T1 because we can't get a better option with low enough latency for their needs.

  20. Actually, yes. by nobuddy · · Score: 1

    When you know your product is consistently used illegally by a person, repeatedly selling them more of that product IS actionable.

    "Hmm, Mr Gacy. It shows here you stuck the last three screwdrivers we sold you into people's skulls. We are going to have to refuse you any future product."

    VS the current:

    "Hmm, Mr Gacy. It shows here you stuck the last three screwdrivers we sold you into people's skulls. We have been authorized to offer you a bulk discount to meet your future needs."

  21. Banning Joe StolenCreditCard works so well! by billstewart · · Score: 1

    It used to be that malware ran on cracked residential PCs, because there were lots of them around and they were much easier targets. But these days the place to be is renting cloud servers with stolen credit cards, and if they're good enough to pass initial validation you're probably golden for a month, or at least until your malware site gets caught. That's plenty long enough to steal some more credit cards, if you're a professional malware practitioner. And it's harder to get caught if you can fire up a server, fire off an attack, and shut down before it's traced. Launder-rinse-repeat.

    Eventually Joe StolenCreditCard or his bank will catch on and invalidate the card, and maybe Amazon has to eat some chargeback as well as banning that credit card in the future, but there's another stolen credit card waiting to abuse.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  22. Wrong. Re:Welcome to 1999 by billstewart · · Score: 2

    Amazon cloud instances are a perfectly plausible place to send spam from, if you can get away with it and if it's cheaper than botnet service (and of course botnet services are just as happy to sell you compromised Amazon cloud instances instead of compromised home PCs if they have them.)

    But he didn't say he tried to spam from his Amazon server and got questioned - he said he tried to send mail, and Amazon questioned them. Most virtual machines don't send mail directly, just as most residential PCs don't, so it's reasonable for them to check that he's sending mail on purpose and wasn't just pwned.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  23. Interesting Architectural Change, Actually by billstewart · · Score: 2

    It used to be that the US was the largest target/market for malware, but the malware itself was often running in China or Korea, and if it was running in the US it was on compromised home PCs. Now it's moved to the cloud. The Amazon part is more interesting, because it's general-purpose cloud service, as opposed to GoDaddy which specializes in hosting domain parking pages and similar malware-usable services.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  24. MAAS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Malware As A Service

    One of the lesser-known clauses in the legal terms of service.

  25. Re:Sweet, I block both ashole companies entirely. by wvmarle · · Score: 1

    I for one don't use any of those.

    Foursquare, Pinterest and IMDB I occasionally ended up on following a Google search result. Etsy, PBS and Yelp I don't even know what it is. Netflix is not available here (I'm not in the US). Spotify may be interesting, getting back to following the music world again. But there must be alternatives for that as well.