Comments on: Cracking open the cybercrime economy

Hacking for fun has evolved into hacking for profit, and created a business model nearly as sophisticated as that of legal software.

[hadaso]

It's not a closed economy

Money is getting into this economy from what we consider "legitimate" economy. They're not only marketing porn/gambling/illegal drugs etc. The kind of businesses I see advertised in Israel using botnet based spam are legitimate businesses: financial institutions, academic colleges (real ones), medical institutions, and other legitimate businesses selling legitimate merchandise/services. The money they pay feeds this illegal industry. And as long as they can go buy services from this illegal economy that steals computer and network resources and sells them at cheaper price than those who actually pay for the resources they sell we would have this economy. Buying these services is not different from buying stolen goods.

I would like to see the information about use of malware organized and flowing to allow those whose PCs were infected find out the advertisers whose spam was sent using their compromised PCs, and done in such a way that they can organize and demand that the advertiser pay for the use of the resources, and sue the spammer in the right jurisdiction if needed. Advertisers should know that if they get a cheap deal and it was cheap because the spammer stole the resources used to do the distribution, they might have to pay for the resources in addition to what they paid to the spammer, and they might have to face criminal charges for illegal use of computer viruses (that is, having paid to be provided with a service based on computer viruses should be enough for a criminal charge. It doesn't have to be limited to those who actually perform the crime they were paid to perform). To achieve this there is a need for an infrastructure that collects the data from various sources (spam reports, security software on infected PCs, network monitoring such as scanning of outgoing traffic for spam by ISPs) and maks them available to the right parties (such as spam reports about mail coming from a dynamic IP address matched with information about the service advertised provided by speakers of the language of the advertisement should be available to the operator of the PC that used the IP address at the time the spam was sent. It's not an easy task. But it is not impossible, and it is needed if we want to stp the flow of legitimate money to the cybercrime economy.

[i_made_this]

HadasoL It;s Not Likely You'l;l See...

...that list of firms in a popular tech publication amytime too soon. Many of the firms to which you're alluding are after all major advertisers at best and poular providers of system killing freeware ay worst. Personally, I'd prefer an adjusted C|NET policy of providing copy (reviews et al) of for-pay products that offer a freeware product for those who cannot afford the for-pay version. To cxompliment this initiative, I'd like to see a requirement that C|NEY only offer downloads of products they recommend in their reviews. This post is a compliment to C|NET's vision and integrity appled to this new world we're living ibn which the article describes.

[wbenton]

Bottom Line: As long as it's profitable... it will continue to expound

That said, what can be implemented to ensure that it's no-longer profitable.

Once the risks and loss are greater than the profits... it will start to dwindle... No sooner.

Walt