FBI Shuts Down Major Scareware Gang 84
Trailrunner7 writes "The FBI has made a major dent in the huge scareware and rogue antivirus problem, arresting two people and seizing dozens of computers, servers and bank accounts as part of a large-scale coordinated operation in twelve countries. The operation, which involved authorities in the United States, Germany, France, Latvia, the UK and several other nations, was designed to disrupt the scareware ecosystem that has been preying on users' security fears in an effort to scam them out of millions of dollars in licensing fees for useless or outright malicious software."
Now they've removed the bin.laden filter (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now they've removed the bin.laden filter (Score:4, Insightful)
...Echelon has more clock cycles available.
LMAO. That deserves some mod points but sadly the overlords at slashdot haven't consented to grace me with some in a while. I have excellent Karma so go figure.
I once asked Rob Malda about this and he was kind enough to explain it to me. It depends on a variety of things like how often you post; too much or too little and you don't get mod points so often. How new or old your account is also has a bearing on it. There's probably more to it than he explained to me but suffice to say it's not as simple as maintaining good karma. For example, some users get 15 mod points at a time while I have personally only received five at a time though I get them relatively frequently.
Back on topic, I have a mixed take on this. While I'm glad to see a legitimate use of police power to take down those who serve no purpose other than preying on others for their selfish gain, I don't see how this will fix the real problem. It seems like for each group they bust, a few more rise up to take its place. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they look at how and why this group got caught and try to avoid making the same mistakes so they can stand a better chance of getting away with it.
This has a social engineering aspect but otherwise follows all of the same principles of computer security. It is not practical to apprehend every offender and prevent every new offender from rising up to cause more damage. It simply cannot be done. What is difficult, but possible, is to harden the targets, to increase the cost of compromise. For social engineering and other forms of deceit, that requires that we value, encourage, and cultivate knowledge and critical thinking. For so long as there are many vulnerable people who continue to fall for these schemes, and thereby enrich and reward the predators with the money they seek, you will never truly solve this problem.
It's not a matter of fairness or who deserves what. It's a matter of actually understanding the problem. It is true that stepping on a poisonous snake does not really injure the snake; it is likewise true that death by snake venom is too high a punishment for such an act, that the punishment grossly exceeds the crime. You can try explaining that to the snake only to find that it cannot be reasoned with. Yet if you know you are marching through an area with a high population of such snakes, the wise wear protective boots. If you know the Internet is a hostile network with criminals eager to defraud you, the wise maintain an awareness of such, perhaps do a little study of security best practices, and are glad that the price of protecting themselves is so low.
Re:Now they've removed the bin.laden filter (Score:5, Insightful)
So if people were smarter, they wouldn't walk by the park and night which would keep them from being targets of mugging, which in turn will make muggers become more productive citizens?
I agree with the idea that capturing one group will result in a second group popping up, but the same is true with crime -- arresting people who commit $criminal_offense won't stop $criminal_offense from occurring.
I do believe, though, that there are a lot of people profiting on cyber crime who sit in the middle and make money off it, while being able to claim they aren't involved -- the banks, the credit card companies, the hosting companies, the ISPs who turn a blind eye and provide the air and water that criminals need to be criminals.
What I'd like to see are RICO prosecutions where the otherwise "legitimate" entities who claim ignorance get prosecuted. I think you'd quickly end up with a lot more self-policing by the passive beneficiaries.
I'd also like to see a little more regulation on the credit card side of things -- why can't I arbitrarily limit what countries or states my credit card is good in? If credit cards by default didn't work overseas -- you had to call 1-800 and get them enabled in the specific countries you wanted them to work in -- that would help, too.
If you can make it harder to charge a credit card overseas, wire transfer money, etc, you might make it harder to profit from these kinds of crimes.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd also like to see a little more regulation on the credit card side of things -- why can't I arbitrarily limit what countries or states my credit card is good in? If credit cards by default didn't work overseas -- you had to call 1-800 and get them enabled in the specific countries you wanted them to work in -- that would help, too.
If you can make it harder to charge a credit card overseas, wire transfer money, etc, you might make it harder to profit from these kinds of crimes.
That's actually brilliant and I'm surprised that I've never heard anyone mention it before. If all it took was a call to the card companies to change the working status of your card in other states/countries that wouldn't even be inconvenient for a legitimate customer. And if the service was opt-in users who thought it was too much effort for security wouldn't ever have to deal with it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I should call my card company and see if they'll do that on request, though.
Re: (Score:2)
They are merely following the examples which are all around them. It's the "virus scanner" model instead of the "security system" model. The difference is a security system is all about proactive prevention, not after-the-fact damage control.
Damage control has its place, as a last resort. It should not be the focus of the effort though.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it depends on your card issuer. My credit union issued Visa came with a warning to call them before attempting to use it overseas.
Re: (Score:2)
It;s not a bad idea in theory, but the implementation needs work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the idea that capturing one group will result in a second group popping up, but the same is true with crime -- arresting people who commit $criminal_offense won't stop $criminal_offense from occurring.
It will to some degree.... but prevention is better than cure. For example, car theft in the UK has dropped to about 1/3 of what it was 10 years ago, due to better security. Now, we have boiler room scams and internet fraud to take its place.
I never ever, ever, never ever, ever (ever never),
Re: (Score:2)
Mugging is a violent crime. Since it involves the use of force, it does not depend on the cooperation of the victim. I see the point you're trying to make here but it just isn't a valid comparison. Saying no to a mugger won't stop him from getting your wallet and is likely to provoke him.
These scammers are non-violent frau
Re: (Score:2)
How are you going to teach people how to say no to that kind of criminal? We have spent a couple of decades scaring people with 'you must protect your computer, if you don't protect it you are an idiot, etc'. All that 'teaching' is what directly lead to this scam. So what do you propose teaching? That your computer will never pop up a warning saying an infection was found, and click to do something about it? Many (all?) legit virus scanners do exactly that. Never purchase something just because your c
Re: (Score:2)
How are you going to teach people how to say no to that kind of criminal? We have spent a couple of decades scaring people with 'you must protect your computer, if you don't protect it you are an idiot, etc'. All that 'teaching' is what directly lead to this scam. So what do you propose teaching? That your computer will never pop up a warning saying an infection was found, and click to do something about it? Many (all?) legit virus scanners do exactly that. Never purchase something just because your computer said to? What happens when your AV subscription is up and you get prompted for exactly that (with the same dire 'you could be exposed' messages that the scams use?
You would teach them that there is no substitute for an actual understanding of the systems you are using and how they work. With computers and networks, enough basic competence to stop the majority of these scams is much more achievable than true expertise. It would be difficult, but unlike apprehending every last malicious person on the planet, it could be done. We routinely spend more resources than it would require on far less worthy things. It would begin with the realization that there is somethin
Self-policing by passive beneficiaries (Score:2)
Oh god please no. Don't give service providers an excuse to discriminate against potentially illegal activity. I do not want VISA, MasterCard, Quest, Comcast, FedEx or UPS guessing at my true purposes when I use their services and then blocking me if I trip their "illicit activity" filter.
"Innocent u
Re: (Score:1)
Re:available (Score:3)
Shutting down a two person operation = massive dent in the problem? How many hundreds of people were raided by copyright SWATs?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
IIIRC, direct damages were in the high tens of millions. Collateral damage is massive--lots of tech support broken window fallacy stuff. Lots of frustration.
Re: (Score:2)
An Oxymoron and an Anonymass walk into a bar...
One encapsulated concepts by reference which a sharp mind will decode: Collateral damage includes hundreds of thousands of sometimes complex tech support calls, which are financially beneficial to the tech support community, perhaps, but which cost society more than having the computers not fail because some criminal with an e-crowbar (i.e. scareware) came along and smashed up their windows, as the windows broken in the broken window fallacy.
The other re'd to h
well crap! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Kudos (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Dammit she's calling my phone right now.
I can't believe this. (Score:5, Funny)
are they gonna give the money back to the victims? (Score:1)
Or just use it to fund their "War of Drugs"
Let this be a warning (Score:2)
If you think offshore servers are safe from the long arm of US law, you're in for a big surprise.. It all looks good when they go after spammers and such, but next it will be anything the FBI, DEA, or DHS, or whoever considers a 'threat'..
Be sure to hide the roaches..
Oh the joy. (Score:1)
The sad, simple fact is that you can't fix stupid. No matter how much you try to educate the end user, they don't seem to listen. If Joe Public wasn't so uneducated about it the problem would go away entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
I think that'll be a generational issue. Today's children are growing up with computers, whereas most of my generation didn't.
Most people who are computer literate don't fall for these scams. Once the computer illiterate die off, it'll be a lot harder to scam people using these methods. There will still be scams, but there were scams before the internet too.
Sure, devices will change, and software will change, and people will fall behind, but I doubt we'll see the kind of technological revolution that the
Re: (Score:1)
I think it's going to get worse (more pro
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I meant by generational. A large number of those casual users are people of my generation or older.
My dad clicks on spam stuff all the time. My sister, who just turned 18 (she's a lot younger than me) doesn't. She's less technical than my dad is - she's just been using the internet most of her life, and knows better.
Re: (Score:2)
We could fix all 7,000,000,000 people in existence, or we could just fix all 3 operating systems that anyone uses. Which is more practical?
The problem is that current OSes make it very easy to install software and give it full privileges, and very hard to install software and give it only limited privi
Re: (Score:2)
(in both Windows and *nix, you have to create a new user account for it, but Windows is worst because most programs can't even be installed unless you're running as administrator)
I run as admin all the time on my Vista machine. I do this because :
Only I use it.
My sytem files are replaceable.
My user files are the most important to me.
It's way more convenient.
Running as a limited user on Windows does not protect your user files, obviously - you have full access to them. I've recently had a couple of ma
Symantec, you're next!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Watchout Symantec, you're next on the FBI's list!!! Always bugging people that you need to be renewed, bugging people that their license will expire in 60 months and that it needs to be renewed immediately to stop that from happening. Letting most viruses go through undetected and infect the PC. Taking over the PC and making it difficult to get rid of by always encountering some sort of 'error' while uninstalling or leaving shit behind that allows it to reinstall itself (Norton 2004 heydays).
McAfee, you're next, too!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. That's why I switched to a Unix-like.
Maybe the doomsayers have a point. Maybe one day, the malware makers will target Linux, and I'll have a virus laden *nix machine that can't boot it's sorry self up. But, that day is down the road, somewhere. Today, I'm enjoying a computer running full speed, unencumbered by any cycle-hungry security software.
Maybe I should apologize now to my great-great-great-grandchildren for being so selfish and uncaring?
Nahhhhh - screw the little jerks. They won't be br
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... and with a convincing-looking "My Computer" window, showing hundreds of viruses on the "C Drive." Always amusing.
More info... (Score:3, Informative)
Either I'm not seeing a lot of detail in the linked article, or it's just not there. This one has more info:
BBC News - FBI targets cyber security scammers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13887152 [bbc.co.uk]
Dozens? Whose dozeons? (Score:1)
What it doesn't say is whose dozens they took down / stole. The wording of the correct. It doesn't say "dozens of computers, servers and bank accounts associated with the culprits", does it?
http://blog.instapaper.com/ [instapaper.com]
Hmm (Score:2)
Scareware? Antivirus? Oh yeah, I remember now! That stuff Windows users have to worry about.
Re: (Score:2)
It's annoying for Linux users too. Google images if full of links to sites that try to run a virus scan and force you to download their stupid product.
Unless you close the tab quickly, you'll likely have to kill firefox altogether because of the modal windows that it pops up. One more reason modal windows are fucking evil.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? I haven't been getting those at all. Some plugin I installed and forgot about, maybe.
Re: (Score:2)
I only run across them myself on Google images, so maybe your usage just doesn't match the targets they're aiming for. If it is a plugin, I'd like to know what it is so I can stop getting them.
I had some of this crap infect my computer (Score:2)
It came in through holes in Flash and Microsoft's crappy javascript interpreter. I yanked the network cable from the box, but it was too late. As I was researching what to do about the Virus Scan Pro 2000 it then tried repeatedly to launch IE to pr0n websites. Took a full weekend to repair the PC and it's never quite worked the same, since, thanks in part to Microsoft's All Your Eggs In One Basket system architecture.
Nice people. I hope they are buried in cement.
Re: (Score:2)
My daughter got one of these on her laptop... during finals week... (ugh).
Luckily, she had already printed out and/or submitted all her term papers.
The damn thing also installed a MBR virus (at least FIXMBR reported a changed MBR).
I wound up booting from a Linux LiveCD, copying her "My Documents" and "My Pictures" onto flash. Then I *ZEROED* /dev/sda before I reinstalled XP from scratch.
I hope they lock these bastards up and throw away the key.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do people always over react? Buried in cement? What, you think these little turds are worthy of a Jimmy Hoffa ending? Those kind of funeral arrangements are reserved for people who piss of really IMPORTANT people. You know, powerful people. So, these guys pissed off a few little pissants, stole a few million dollars, and prevented you from logging into WOW for a weekend. Phhht. They don't deserve anything better than being shot, and left for the dogs to eat. Just regular scum, not worth gettting
Re: (Score:2)
Why do people always over react?
They don't deserve anything better than being shot, and left for the dogs to eat.
I'd call that overreacting.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, they're not worth risking a dog's health over.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, some of us blame the problem on the users who insist on using an insecure operating system. Worse, they use those insecure operating systems in stupid ways.
Would you like to see a video of dancing pink ponies? Just click the Windows executable, wait for it to download, then click through all the silly Windows warnings - don't worry about all those warnings!
FBI = good or FBI = bad? (Score:2)
One difference is we know the purpose of the seizures in this case, which makes it seem less fly-by-night, but I wonder how the hosting providers felt when the servers were first seized. Not that we should let the FBI seize whatever, whenever, but sometimes quick action to seize evidence is necessary, even if it inconveniences others
Re: (Score:1)
http://blog.instapaper.com/post/6830514157 [instapaper.com]
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think that the servers that were confiscated a couple of days ago were not taken as part of this operation? On the 21st, the FBI seized a bunch of servers, and there was much howling. On the 22nd they make this announcement, which includes 'seizure of more than 40 computers and servers'.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with yesterday's FBI story was the ham-fisted way that servers were removed from the data center, causing outages for legitimate customers in addition to taking the bad guys offline.
Re: (Score:2)
Instapaper Servers Stolen in Bust (Score:1)
Marco Arment explains his version of the situation in his blog. Basically, the FBI has this "drug bust" proximity to the evidence must also be evidence mentality to executing a search warrant. Anything unrelated to the crime could have been loaded on adjacent servers. Did they only need one search warrant for DigitalOne?
Re: (Score:1)
While your at it... (Score:2)
Why not do something about those TV commercials which advertise virus protection and instantly fix your computer while of course also making the Internet faster? They are all worthless scams...whats the difference?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, why not? At that point it's just an ad for a product.
A major dent? (Score:2)
The operation, which involved authorities in the United States, Germany, France, Latvia, the UK and several other nations, seizing dozens of computers, servers and bank accounts as part of a large-scale coordinated operation in twelve countries, made a major dent in the huge scareware and rogue antivirus problem, arresting two people .
scareware gand ??? (Score:2)