Fighting malware and spam

Botnet keepers rake in adware cash

Zombie herder makes $430 per day from single piece of adware.

According to research by the German Honeynet Project, a botnet controller who installed adware including DollarRevenue on compromised machines earned over $430 in a single day, just from the DollarRevenue software.

The zombie net in question was mostly created using the recently-patched MS06-040 vulnerability in Windows, and took control of 7,700 machines in a 24-hour period. DollarRevenue, based from a shadowy site in the Netherlands, pays per install on a sliding scale depending on the home country of the machine infected. The researchers calculated the botnet's income from installing the software by examining logs of infected hosts. The net was also used to install other adware products and hired out to send spam campaigns.

'Adware has long been a major source of income for those who hijack other people's computers,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'Many of these adware firms run highly suspect operations, both ethically and legally, and much more needs to be done to prevent them from making crime pay.'

Details of the research can be found on the Honeynet Project's 'honeyblog'.

Find out more about how money is made in the digital underworld at the Virus Bulletin conference (11-13 October, Montréal), where Guillaume Lovet (Fortinet) will present his paper 'Dirty money on the wires: the business models of cyber criminals'.

See the full programme here or click here to register now.

11 September 2006

Tags: virus