Slashdot Mirror
Almost 100 Arrested In Worldwide Swoop On Blackshades Malware
MattSparkes (950531) writes "Law enforcement around the world has teamed-up to arrest 97 for buying/using Blackshades malware, which can remotely seize control of a victim's computer, access documents, record keystrokes and even activate their webcam to take surreptitious pictures and video. It is also able to encrypt files in order to extract a ransom for their release. Blackshades RAT is a commercial product costing less than $200 which was marketed as a tool to test network security. However, it is widely used by hackers and was even said by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to have been used against Syrian activists by the government in 2012."
to buy and sell a piece of software? what one does with it is obviously a different story, but I didnt think there was anything illegal against buying and selling a piece of software. In true /. fashion, I did not RTFA
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
And yet the biggest criminals responsible for the vast majority of the world's malware are sitting at Perion Network, in a lovely building in Redmond, Washington. They must have bribed the entire fucking government to do what they do without the SWAT time shutting them down. If it was up to me, I'd arrest everyone and then a drone would destroy their building.
"For internal use only"
How many of you thought, "Hey, only $200...hmmmm?"
Be honest.
I wonder what this particular Slashvertisement cost to buy?
which is very different than Microsoft's forensic tool COFEE which is also used by a government that runs a prison torture camp in Cuba for freedom. in a totally patrio-tastic way this tool is used to investigate unamericans like Moxie Marlinspike which is also super extremely legal.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The mafia taking down a competitor encroaching on their territory
So please, write Windows computers and not just computers. Thank you.
Back in the days...
Yay, finally hacking is bad.
TFA apparently has a upskirt panty picture of 19-year-old Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf.
Only 100 - that can't be. NSA is not that understaffed!
I suspect that what happened here was the authors put a backdoor into their backdoor software...
Yo dawg, I herd you like backdoors, so we put a backdoor in your backdoor so you can.... er, sod it, you can probably guess the rest yourselves. :-/
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
How is this any different from something like GoToMyPc.COM or Join.Me ????
Should I be worried now that I use join.me to invite friends to see what I'm doing, or use it to help friends having trouble?
A piece of software's intended functions should not be viewed as good or bad, it's simply a tool. You can club some one over the head with a monkey wrench and kill them. Does that mean this tool has no legitimate uses?
"Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?"
If it is, then I find it interesting that there are other people legally allowed to remotely access computers without the user's awareness/permissions. Surely if this is illegal behavior for some people under a governing body, then it must be illegal for others under a governing body.fullstop. Not talking about holding encrypted files for ransom though. If this was wrongly used by the Syrian government in 2012, what stops other software which isn't accessible to the public that does many of the same things from being used by a government secretly, what if that government doesn't have oversight????? :0
raids sponsored by Vupen :)
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
A hair dresser needs a license to cut hair But people who write this kinda software need nothing??? doesn't make any since to me. This kinda software has zero business in the public domain stop giving the criminals tools for free. And that is IMO
Jack of all trades,master of none
I remember hearing years ago that Paris Hilton had copyright over the phrase "That's hot". Would have thought this phrase had the same protection.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Law enforcement around the world has teamed-up to arrest 97 for buying/using Blackshades malware, which can remotely seize control of a victim's computer"
What Operating System does this malware run on, or aren't we allowed to mention Microsoft Windows. ref
Law enforcement has fully gone mental. hacking is not illegal, it never was & never will be. the correct word is "Cracking".
It does the most.
Just because they are "arrested" doesn't mean that they gonna serve any jail time or pay any restitution.
Gotta laugh on the US, they think they can just jail everybody everywhere. If you gonna continue this trend we gonna beat you americans with a stick when you come to our countries as tourists and yeah you could say that not everybody agrees with what the us gov does but most of them do!
The countries justice systems are reflected by their own citizens. In the US they really want to jail you for 10 years for speeding.
FBI really neaded a lot of brain to pull all the records of the sellers paypal account ... and then what they put up the statement that OMG these made 350k in sales. I doubt that they even made 35k. Hackers are mostly poor people and kids, they don't have money.
On the other hand I don't feel sorry for them because there are hundreds of free RATs (Remote Administration Tools) out there in the wild and if you don't like them you can code your own. Why to buy any.
I remember hearing years ago that Paris Hilton had copyright over the phrase "That's hot". Would have thought this phrase had the same protection.
Trademark. That's a trademark, not a copyright. There is a huge difference.
great job slashdot, you just told all the script kiddies what to download next
We are not safe any more, even the government is spying on the citizens. The hackers also want to use BlackShades to hack our computers. With that said, micro keylogger is not a scam at all.