Peaches Posted September 19, 2009 Report Share Posted September 19, 2009 September 18, 2009 10:18 AM PDT Why virus writers are turning to open sourceby Nick Heath "Malware developers are going open source in an effort to make their malicious software more useful to fraudsters. By giving criminal coders free access to malware that steals financial and personal details, the malicious software developers are hoping to expand the capabilities of old Trojans. According to Candid Wüest, threat researcher with security firm Symantec, around 10 percent of the Trojan market is now open source. The move to an open source business model is allowing criminals to add extra features to their malware. "The advantages are that you have more people involved in developing it, so someone who is into cryptography could add a cryptographic plug-in or somebody who does video streaming could add remote streaming of the desktop," Wüest said. Releasing Trojans as open source dates back to 1999, when the Cult of the Dead Cow group released the source code for its Trojan called Back Orifice. More recently, the developers of the Limbo Trojan published its source code in an effort to boost take-up following a slump in its use by fraudsters. "Full story at CNET - http://news.cnet.com/security/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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