Link Between Botnets & Illegal Pharmaceutical Supply Businesses Revealed

IronPort Systems, a leading provider of protection to enterprises from virus, spyware and spam, and a subsidiary of Cisco Systems revealed on August 28, 2008 that there was a connection between botnets and unauthorized business chains of pharmaceutical supplies. According to the company, these supply chains hire botnets to use them for distributing spam that boost their Websites.

A research conducted by IronPort also showed that over 80% of spam messages sent from the Storm botnet advertise branded Internet pharmacy companies. These spam messages are transmitted through a network of PCs infected with the Storm Trojan using a number of advanced social engineering tactics as well as Web-based exploits.

IronPort's report further revealed that a Russian criminal gang in conjunction with Storm was providing spam templates, Website designs, "spamvertized" URLs, product fulfillment, customer support, and payment card processing. This gang hired spam botnets to advertise its partners' unauthorized pharmacy Websites that receive a 40% commission on the different sales orders.

Sebastien Commerot, Marketing Manager for IronPort Systems, Middle East, said that the company's research revealed that the Storm and other spam botnets produced commission-worth orders fulfilled by unauthorized supply chains. These supply chains generate revenue of more than $150 Million per annum, as reported by EyeOfDubai on August 28, 2008.

Moreover, the pharmacological testing that IronPort sponsored disclosed that 66% of shipments that the unauthorized pharmaceuticals facilitated contained ingredients that though were active, but didn't have the right dosage, while the remaining were placebos. Consequently, consumers assume a considerable ingesting risk pertaining to an uncontrolled material from foreign distributors.

Furthermore, Ray Kafity, Regional Sales Manager for IronPort Systems, North Africa, Middle East and Pakistan, said that spam has evolved into well-funded, complex and organized malware operations competing with the authorized software vendors. malware developers are offering products that are complete solutions to boost profitability and efficiency. Therefore, IronPort strongly advises enterprises to deploy spam filters, monitor communications and port, assess their reputation on the Web, as well as continuously upgrade their anti-malware and anti-virus products to stop the dissemination of such Internet threats, as reported by EyeOfDubai on August 28, 2008.

Related article: Long URLs Cause Security Flaw in Opera Browser

» SPAMfighter News - 03-09-2008

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