Finjan's most recent Cybercrime Intelligence report pulls the covers off a clandestine, underground network of buyers and sellers of a new and valuable commodity, your spyware infected computer! Read on for the details.

Randy George, Director, IT Operations, Boston Red Sox

June 23, 2009

1 Min Read

Finjan's most recent Cybercrime Intelligence report pulls the covers off a clandestine, underground network of buyers and sellers of a new and valuable commodity, your spyware infected computer! Read on for the details.Suppose you were a hacker, identity thief or digital criminal. What would you pay for complete access to a group of, say, 1000 computers? $5? $10? Would you pay more for access to infected computers that reside in the US as opposed to India? Lots of variables to consider. But don't spend too much time thinking about it, someone's beat you to it. The "Golden Cash Network", operated by hacks and spyware developers motivated by money, is an entire online trading platform that connect buyers of infected PC's with seller's. According to the report, the proprietors of this botnet network are recruiting and paying website owners to inject iFrames into legitimate websites that ultimately forward unsuspecting people to sites that download various flavors of malware.

According to the report, one particular strain of malware was designed specifically to collect the FTP credentials of legitimate sites. Finjan looked closer at the database of infected sites and discovered over 100,000 domains whose credentials were compromised. If you haven't changed the password to your FTP site yet, please take a moment to do so now.

While the report itself is partially an advertisement for Finjan's secure web gateway product, the information contained within is fascinating and underscores the sophistication of the technology that money motivated hacks and cybercriminals are using at your expense.

OK, now's lets all update our DATS and kick off a full scan together!

You can view Finjan's report at www.finjan.com/Cybercrime_Report

About the Author(s)

Randy George

Director, IT Operations, Boston Red Sox

Randy George has covered a wide range of network infrastructure and information security topics in his 4 years as a regular InformationWeek and Network Computing contributor. He has 13 years of experience in enterprise IT, and has spent the last 8 years working as a senior-level systems analyst and network engineer in the professional sports industry. Randy holds various professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Check Point, a BS in computer engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management.

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