Priorities?
If as much effort was put into tackling these malware companies as is expended tracking down and dragging to court "file sharers" and Russian MP3 download sites, then maybe this problem wouldn't be on quite the scale that it is now.
A report published Wednesday exposes a growing ecosystem that combines the talents of software developers, web marketers, and ordinary grunts to infect millions of end users' machines. Similar to the Amway, Shaklee, and other direct marketing businesses of yesteryear, the PPI, or pay-per-install, model relies on average joes …
"A lot of the activities are taking place in known "havens" where the authorities have little if any incentive or power to deal with them."
What, like the USA you mean??
***************************************************
Domain ID:D151825232-LROR
Domain Name:PAY-PER-INSTALL.ORG
Registrant Name:WhoisGuard Protected
Registrant Organization:WhoisGuard
Registrant Street1:8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 - 732
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Westchester
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:90045
Registrant Country:US
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Charles 9 @ "It's hard to get priorities straight when they're not straight (and likely CAN'T BE straightened) in the home countries of the criminals" -
WTF. Academic Primakov speaks about present actions of the Soviet Union this week... do you also state that the malware came from Soviet Union?
Dan Goodin @ San Francisco, you could get a thankful attention of the Soviet audience then (-:
Mine's with a Soviet passport in the pocket.
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"What computer Operating System do the vast majority of these 'malware ecosystems' require to successfully operate?"
The one that's installed on the largest number of machines worldwide, and which therefore yields the largest number of potential targets and by extension the greatest profit.
That was easy. Next question?
That means squat. The given address could well be a front (common organized crime tactic), and I highly doubt the actual operators of the business would be at that location. More likely, they're operating underground or even out of the country. OTOH, isn't it interesting that a good chunk of the malware afloat has Russian ties, yet no one can seem to get the Russian government to do anything meaningful about them?
"yet no one can seem to get the Russian government to do anything meaningful" -
This is really interesting. First problem is poverty, second one is that local rules say when you study programming, you have to write some malicious code first, then comes an invitation from MIT/Bletchley if you have fluent English. Third is that RU govt needs more students to have practice in MIT on the house (-;
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