Last week’s article about how to prevent CryptoLocker ransomware attacks generated quite a bit of feedback and lots of questions from readers. For some answers — and since the malware itself has morphed significantly in just a few day’s time — I turned to Lawrence Abrams and his online help forum BleepingComputer.com, which have been following and warning about this scourge for several months.
Consumer demand for cheap prescription drugs sold through spam-advertised Web sites shows no sign of abating, according to a new analysis of bookeeping records maintained by three of the world’s largest rogue pharmacy operations.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the International Computer Science Institute and George Mason University examined caches of data showing the day-to-day finances of GlavMed, SpamIt, and Rx-Promotion, shadowy affiliate programs that over a four-year period processed more than $170 million worth of orders from customers seeking cheaper, more accessible and more discretely available drugs. The result is is perhaps the most detailed analysis yet of the business case for the malicious software and spam epidemics that persist to this day.
The cybercrime underground is expanding each day, yet the longer I research this subject the more convinced I am that much of it is run by a fairly small and loose-knit group of hackers. That suspicion was reinforced this week when I discovered that the author of the infamous ZeuS Trojan was a core member of Spamdot, until recently the most exclusive online forum for spammers and the shady businessmen who maintain the biggest spam botnets.
Thanks to a deep-seated enmity between the owners of two of the largest spam affiliate programs, the database for Spamdot was leaked to a handful of investigators and researchers, including KrebsOnSecurity. The forum includes all members’ public posts and private messages — even those that members thought had been deleted. I’ve been poring over those private messages in an effort to map alliances and to learn more about the individuals behind the top spam botnets.
The last post in this series introduced the world to “Google,” an alias chosen by the hacker in charge of Cutwail — currently the world’s largest spam botnet. Google rented his crime machine to members of SpamIt, an organization that paid spammers to promote rogue Internet pharmacy sites. This made Google a top dog, but also a primary target of other botmasters selling software to SpamIt, particularly the hacker known as “SPM,” the guy behind the infamous Srizbi botnet.
Previous stories in my Pharma Wars series have identified top kingpins behind the world’s largest spam botnets. Today’s post includes never-before-published information on “Google,” the secretive hacker in charge of the infamous Cutwail botnet.
Security researchers have dealt a mighty blow to a spam botnet known as Pushdo, a massive grouping of hacked PCs that until recently was responsible for sending more than 10 percent of all e-mail worldwide.
