GeekLimit

Rise of the White- and Gray-hats

Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Geeky, Web

In the fight against spam and scams, it appears the best remedy has been time. Like a snake on its own tail, the scammer and spammers are starting to attach each other in a self-destructive sub-economy.

1. It has been discovered that the ransomware that locks your documents and asks for money has been cracked. Users affected can unlock their files with the password ‘mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw’. Thank you to whoever stopped working on Vista’s security long enough to take out this nusiance.
2. Again with the ransomware, it appears that competition in the scammer market is driving profits down.  Yes, as in the real economy, more people are trying to compete, and there is a price war where scammers are seeing the going rate for scams plummeting, in some cases from $3000 to $200.  Good news for people who are victims of fraud, but bad news for the scammers, as the risks are staying the same for much lower profit.
3. On a different note, the sellers of fake prescription medication are finding themselves the victim of theft themselves.  People who deal in stolen credit cards are buing the fake meds and reselling them.  When the credit card payment gets reversed, the original seller ends up with no money or fake meds.

It’s nice to see that the worse parts of the web are succeptable to their own business.  This type of self-correcting behavior is nice to see, but of course isn’t a solution.  Fake meds still end up on the market, and all of this is a collossal waste of time for all of the innocent people and companies involved.  Also, the judge won’t care who you were defrauding…
In the meantime though, it’s nice to see there is one more deterrent towards doing nefarious business on the web: your partners in crime.

Comments (0) | June 5th, 2006