Monday, April 10, 2006
Your computer is now worth a quarter of a cent
"Why would anyone want to take over my computer", you could logically ask, "when I'm not the FBI or CIA or even rich?"
Today's criminals may not care about anything on your computer other than its network connection. They'll take it over so they can use it to send spam, or use it along with thousand of others to flood some victim's website with so much traffic that legitimate customers can't get through. They do that because of the extortion possibilities ("Nice web site ya got here. Sure would be a shame if ten thousand computers tried to connect to it at once next Tuesday").
There's a black market now in the use of armies of infected computers. Crooks will rent anyone interested the use of 10,000 home machines for $25. If that price comes from supply and demand, then things are getting worse: the rental fees used to be higher. Of course it's also possible that the mobsters buying the access are, ahh, better negotiators than the geeks selling the access.
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Today's criminals may not care about anything on your computer other than its network connection. They'll take it over so they can use it to send spam, or use it along with thousand of others to flood some victim's website with so much traffic that legitimate customers can't get through. They do that because of the extortion possibilities ("Nice web site ya got here. Sure would be a shame if ten thousand computers tried to connect to it at once next Tuesday").
There's a black market now in the use of armies of infected computers. Crooks will rent anyone interested the use of 10,000 home machines for $25. If that price comes from supply and demand, then things are getting worse: the rental fees used to be higher. Of course it's also possible that the mobsters buying the access are, ahh, better negotiators than the geeks selling the access.
# posted by Frederick @ 10:02 AM Email to a friend:
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