Re: Webroot Uncovers Thousands of Stolen Identities

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Tue, 9 May 2006 Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:

> On Tue, 09 May 2006 23:37:44 -0000, Fergie said:
> > Personally, I think we *are* seeing it. Deluges of it.
> >
> > Every day, week, month, etc, ad nasueum.
>
> Do a back-of-envelope.  600 *million* computers.  Call it half a billion
> with spyware.
>
> We're seeing hundreds and thousands of hits per day.  100,000 is all of
> 0.02% of half a billion.
>
> Even if they took 1% for a ride, that would be 5 million cases of fraud.
>
> One of 3 possibilities:
>
> 1) That 87% is waaaay over the top, and 8% is more reasonable.  I don't
> buy this for a moment.
>
> 2) The spyware community is either inept, or even 1% is enough to make them
> all rich enough to not work harder, or the bottleneck is elsewhere - cashout
> or similar issues.
>
> 3) The spyware community is very cognizant of *exactly* how much fraud
> the credit card companies will tolerate, and are good at flying under the
> wire....
>
> Take your pick, or suggest a #4.
 
4. I'd guess that I'm getting a few hundred spam hits per day. If 
that's average, and assuming 200/day, then we're seeing 50 billion hits 
per day, not 100,000.

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.