Torrent Sites Earned $70M After Dropping Malware On Visitors (softpedia.com)

jones_supa writes: One in three torrent sites is spreading malware, claims a recent joint report (PDF) from Digital Citizens Alliance and RiskIQ, which compiled data from over 800 sites. Most of the time, the sites expose visitors to drive-by attacks that silently download malicious files on computers without any user interaction. These types of attacks are usually carried out through malvertising campaigns. It turns out that this is actually a good business for the operators of the pirate sites: depending on traffic, they can make between $200 and $5,000 per day. In total it is estimated that this type of covert agreement between malware distributors and pirate site operators has pocketed the latter about $70 million per year.

Comments

Who is the Digital Citizens Alliance?

[PopeRatzo]

This report is from something called the "Digital Citizens Alliance". Sounds good, right? Sounds like a bunch of pro-freedom net citizens protecting all of our rights, yes?

Would it surprise you to learn that the DCA is a lobbying group involved in trying to get Google to take down search results? Here's a sentence from their materials:

Creators aren't the only ones harmed by content theft...

Does anyone else smell an agenda here?