Trusteer Cautions of Online-Crooks Becoming New All-Inclusive Service Providers

Trusteer the security company, which recently conducted a research, found that cyber-crooks had diversified their activities while serving like an all-inclusive 'one-stop-shop' in favor of intermediary scammers. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this dated November 30, 2011.

Chief Technology Officer Amit Klein of the provider of browser security explains that the above shops provide virtually all services for cyber-criminals to purchase with which they can satisfy scammers' demand. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this.

Klein further explained that Trusteer had encountered one new scammers' gang, which along with providing malware infections at rates 0.5-4.5 cents/upload, considering the geographical area it served, offered anti-virus (AV) locaters and polymorphic encryption too.

The latest strategy of the one-stop-shop related to malevolent services, according to Klein, shows how the market has evolved naturally. Thus, considering that customers, meaning online-criminals, while aiming to contaminate, also require evading anti-virus solutions; therefore, why not trade something which combines the two.

And with respect to polymorphic encryption done to malicious software, Klein reports that scammers demand a $25-$50 price, while for locating anti-viruses and thereby preventing their detection of malware, the prices demanded are $20/week and $100/month.

Trusteer further stated that it as well encountered advertisements that potential purchasers of malware posted, essentially displaying what the cost of malware should be, the process of charging them, and how they should benefit. For e.g., they would display the cost of distinct malware uploads whose computation would be done with the BlackHole crime-ware toolkit's statistical module of the ad-publishers themselves, that the advertisers would give advance payment when purchasing from malware-traders along with suggestions like immediate payment to sellers, who've 1 to 10 new forum messages else payment would be done later. Furthermore, domains were scrutinized with 'scan4you' a website for scanning malware during daytime, while for unsafe domains that anti-virus databases so labeled, there would be automatic replacements.

Eventually, the cost would be as per the number of malware programs like $4.5/1,000 Web-surfers getting 3% of malware infections, $6/1,000 Web-surfers getting 4%, and $30/1,000 Web-surfers getting over 20%.

Conclusively, Trusteer emphasizes that anti-virus software on computer-desktops should be complemented with security mechanisms especially created for safeguarding from financial malware.

Related article: TRUSTe Certified Websites May Still Contain Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 12/8/2011