Selling Malware: A Growing Market

Selling Trojans, phising kits, and other types of malware is a good business lately, on a growing market that seems to copy the methods of the legit software companies. With an impressing number of on-line stores available, 24/7 technical support, and the possibility of other buyers to post reviews about the quality of the products, the malware economy allows everybody to enter the computer crime world.

Mr. Thomas Holt, a teacher at North Carolina University, presented recently the data gathered by his honey net team in the last 16 months at the Defcon security gathering which took place in August in Las Vegas. The honey net networks are used to analyze the impact of viruses, Trojans and hackers, these computers are deliberately left insecure in other to attract such intrusions so that they can be analyzed after wards. These networks are closely monitored and have no relevance, the data contained on the machines is of no value.

Using quality classification systems of products, feedbacks from clients, independent evaluations, and discounts for higher volume purchases, the malware industry is copying the model of companies like eBay or Yelp.

"It is very important, to take into consideration the problem of the stolen data, because sensitive informations are targeted", said Mr. Holt during the conference. "You can build an arsenal of tools visiting these web sites".

Any person, as new to the Internet, can get on these forums, purchase it, and have a Trojan with out any defects, and use it how he or she wishes, in any activity that he desires to conduct. The web sites promote the quality of the tools they offer, and they offer a variety of software programs that cover basically anything a person would need to commit crimes.

For now, this is just a growing industry, but being there and offering people such alternatives could be a big problem for the Internet in the near future, still this is allowed and is totally legal.