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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Pay-Per-Install a Major Source of Badness

Summary: Research from UC Berkeley and the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Software Development Technologies found that most malware-infected PCs may have gotten that way through pay-per-install services, which charge criminal clients $7 to $180 per thousand successful installations depending on the victims' geographic location. In August 2010 the researchers infiltrated four competing PPI services by hijacking multiple affiliate accounts and built an automated system to regularly download the installers those services were pushing.

What's compelling: At $7 to $180 per thousand installs, access to compromised machines is cheap enough to be a routine line item for criminal gangs, and the affiliates who place the malware are paid only for installs that succeed.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Malware
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