Criminal Bots

So, Who's Really In Charge?

In Case You Don't Have Enough To Worry About

“ ... Some attacks are driven by revenge as well as financial gain. Last year, a noted Russian spammer nicknamed PharmaMaster – he usually advertises pharmaceuticals – felt his business was endangered by a Silicon Valley anti-spam startup named Blue Security. PharmaMaster initiated an attack that crippled Blue Security’s Web site. The firm countered by placing information about the attack on its corporate blog, hosted by popular blog site TypePad, owned by Six Apart Ltd. PharmaMaster then hired a bot herder to conduct a denial-of-service attack that shut down all of Six Apart’s blogs, including those hosted on its Typepad.com service. Eventually, Blue Security surrendered and got out of the business of anti-spam software. “PharmaMaster paid $1 million to take out Blue Security,” or about $2,000 an hour for the attack, said Schiller, the Portland State professor. “But (PharmaMaster) was making $3 million a month, so it was worth it.” At the time, security experts said the Blue Security attack was so severe that only a few of the world’s largest corporations would have been able to withstand it. Given the power that the bot herders wield, questions inevitably arise about whether terrorists are behind such crimes. There is no clear answer, and security experts are divided on the issue. Terrorism link? [Full WHO'S BEHIND CRIMINAL BOT NETWORKS?] ”