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Welcome to the 4th Edition of SWI Community News!! We missed August, but hope to get back on a monthly track starting now, due to the clamoring of our dedicated fans (thanks Aegonis
). Again this month we have some interesting lists and my rant on the state of the Internet. We hope you enjoy our newsletter and find it helpful. Please comment so we can find out what you want to see and what you find most helpful. We will put up another poll in a few months to see how people are responding, but you can comment at any time. Please do let us know if you don't like something and let others know if you do like something. And here is the usual disclaimer:
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Budfred's Rant
Criminals, Heroes and Vigilantes
If you spend much time online at all, you have seen that all of us are under attack by criminals. It started even before the Internet existed. In the early days it was mostly angry people who were invested in making life more difficult for other people by creating viruses and other garbage. Sometimes they did it just to get even with a world that they thought had treated them badly and sometimes they did it to compete with other angry people to see who could do the most damage, but it really wasn't about money. After a while, they figured out that they could make money as they messed with people's lives. Once the Internet got running full force, they were ready to start invading computers to steal information, redirect to "adult" sites, advertise all sorts of products you have no interest in and make you rich (yeah, right) by transferring funds for Nigerian princes. As the Internet evolved, the criminals evolved with it. At first, someone who was careful could easily avoid being exploited with some basic precautions. The criminals mostly exploited the most vulnerable people who visited risky sites and didn't use protection programs. Viruses evolved along with the Internet and became worms, trojans, adware, spyware, spam, phishing and so on. They have gotten much more sophisticated at playing on the psychology of the Internet users, but still mostly exploit the vulnerable who really aren't very computer literate. Today, it takes multiple protection programs and extreme care to prevent infection. Once infected, it is much more difficult to fix the problems they create and they very aggressively make efforts to disable the protection programs and the tools we use to remove the garbage they install. They have created huge "botnets" with enormous power at their disposal by infecting millions of computers with software that allows them to use those computers in their own networks. They then do things like attacking other computers or companies. For the last couple of weeks, a number of sites that are involved in fighting them have been under attack and the smaller ones are in danger of being wiped out. Even the larger sites are having to work hard to keep from being shut down and it is very expensive for them to maintain the strength to continue. All the while, the criminals are making billions of dollars while ruining lives all over the world.
An update since I started writing this: the biggest site under attack was not giving in, so they also began a "reputation attack" by using access to PayPal accounts they had stolen to send donations to that site. The owners of those accounts assumed the site had stolen their information and complained viciously in some cases. This means that the criminals became so desperate to hurt this site that they gave away some of their stolen accounts to attack them. Unfortunately for them, the site had very good contacts with law enforcement and PayPal that allowed them to not only prevent most of the damage, but also help the people whose accounts were stolen and provides some leads that may help to take the criminals down. This won't stop the criminals, but it may slow them down.
Then there are the heroes. I consider anyone who fights these criminals to be heroes, starting with the staff of this forum who donate a huge amount of their spare time every week to help people who come to SpywareInfo with infected computers looking for help. For many, it is like a second job, except that they do not get paid for it at all. Every thing we do at SWI is on a volunteer basis and that is true of most of the heroes fighting the criminals. While the criminals make billions exploiting people, we give away hours and hours of time to fight them. There are a lot more of our heroes than there are of their criminals, but, unfortunately, it only takes one criminal to steal the life savings of dozens or even hundreds of victims. We clean computers one at a time, they infect them by the hundreds. And they do this as their only job, probably on a part time basis so that they have time to maintain drug habits and other criminal activities. If you want to get an idea of the extent of the heroes, visit the Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals website where many of the malware fighting sites are registered. In addition to SWI, one of the most important sites to know about is CastleCops. They maintain the PIRT service which is involved in documenting and shutting down phishing sites. They are not simply trying to shut down individual sites, they are looking to gather the evidence to have the criminals brought to justice. They also now have the SIRT, MIRT and another service that is in development to fight the criminals. These are designed to go after "spam" scams, malware and another kind of attack. The MalwareComplaints site is involved in collecting your experiences with malware to report to various authorities who have the power to take action once they understand the magnitude of the problem. At SWI, we maintain a "Submissions for CastleCops databases" reporting forum for people to post about malware they have identified so that they can be added to lists maintained at CastleCops for the use of the malware fighting heroes and distributed to companies that make protection programs. The list goes on and on for the sites that host heroes and almost none of them are paid a penny for their efforts. The sites collect donations to keep them online, but the staff are almost always volunteers. Occasionally one of the heroes will be recognized with an award or even get a job from the work he or she does, but that is more of an exception than a rule. Many are not even computer professionals, but they have taken time to learn and give back to others struggling with malware. The main reward they receive is an occasional "Thank you" from someone they have helped.
Finally, there are the vigilantes. All of us who fight with the criminals would like to see them pay by spending a good long time behind bars or giving back for what they have stolen. Most of us have thought about ways to make that happen. However, some believe they need to take on this task themselves rather than rely on governments and law enforcement to do the job. Even as the attack goes on against the sites mentioned earlier, some of these vigilantes are bragging about attacking back. When it was pointed out that innocents will be harmed with the reverse attack, at least one of them insisted that it is the fault of the victim for not adequately protecting his or her computer. As a malware fighter, I am embarrassed by this. As much as I would like to shut down the criminals and even have angry thoughts about hurting them as they have hurt others; even in my angriest moment, I would not be able to justify hurting innocents. I also do not believe that taking on the same behavior of the criminals is in the best interest of the fight. When we use their tools to fight them and we hurt innocents, who is the criminal?? Most importantly, they will not actually succeed in causing harm to the criminals, except maybe to reduce receipts for one day. The heroes, who fight with legitimate tools and cooperate with the officials who are also trying to deal with the problem, have saved the public millions or even billions of dollars over the years. While we haven't been able to stop them, we have at least slowed them down which is why they attack our sites when they could be using their botnets to steal more money. The vigilantes are throwing buckets of water into the desert so that they embarrass themselves and malware fighters through their actions. Vigilantes in the comic books are exciting, in real life they are just another form of criminal.
So please, support your heroes here and in other forums. Protect your computer and your finances. And please do not try to strike back at the criminals with their methods or you will simply become another enemy for the heroes to fight.
Other things you can do to support your heroes:
Read the article "So how did I get infected in the first place?" which is linked at the top of each page at SWI and protect yourself.
Support your heroes with donations to their forums and let them know you appreciate them.
Post your complaints at Malware Complaints.
When you know about a new infection, report it for our database.
