Fergie's Tech Blog

One-Stop Shopping for Hackers

Scott Berinato writes on PC World:

Security researchers studying the latest Internet crime trends have discovered a new Eastern European website that uses a large botnet to infect vulnerable PCs. The operators of the botnet and website charge clients for each successful PC infection.

The site is likely based out of Russia, according to the security researcher's sources who asked to remain anonymous because of their underground intelligence work. While the front-end website, called loads.cc, doesn't appear to contain or deliver malware, readers are strongly urged to avoid visiting the site in case malware is present and because the site likely logs the IP addresses of its visitors. (The ".cc" Internet domain is assigned to the Australian territories of the Cocos and Keeling Islands.)

The sources discovered the site while performing forensics on some servers known to host malware. They say that, when last checked, loads.cc was still in operation.

posted by Fergie @ 10/29/2007 09:58:00 PM