US and UK Zombies Demand Top Dollar

coondoggie writes "Denizens of the malware underworld who sell access to compromised computers do so at varying rates depending on where the machines are located, researchers told the Usenix Security Symposium this week. The researchers followed what they called the pay-per-install (PPI) industry, which obtains infected machines from which malware can be launched and sells access to these machines to parties looking for someplace to execute malicious code. Sometimes the PPI sellers hire middlemen to supply the compromised machines, and the PPI dealer retails them."

Of Course It Costs More

[WrongSizeGlass]

Of course it costs more in the US & UK. It's to offset the standard of living (or rather the standard of being undead).

Re:

[arisvega]

It's to offset the standard ..

It should be the other way around; you are better off being undead in rural places, lots of brains available. An offset would be prudent if you held undead status in, say, Siberia. Or the ocean floor.

Washington & Westminster must cost the best th

[andrewbaldwin]

"It should be the other way around; you are better off being undead in rural places, lots of brains available"

Following that logic Washington and Westminster should be the best places of all many brains, but as they belong to politicians, most would be hardly used and thus in "near perfect*" condition.

*Only missing the "integrity" centres.

Re:

[Opportunist]

If you think that's bad, you don't even want to know what you'd have to pay in the US or UK for a reliable Ninja.

So you wanna be a spy

[tepples]

you don't even want to know what you'd have to pay in the US or UK for a reliable Ninja.

In fact, I was curious, and I went on a Google search.

1. Google ninja, and it turns out ninja were the covert agents of feudal Japan.
2. Google covert agent salary, and this page [soyouwanna.com] states that CIA officers start at $34,000 to $52,000 a year.

A simple question:

[del_diablo]

If there is actually places where you can buy infected computers, why are not all the retailers rooted up and thrown directly into jail?

Re:

[mywhitewolf]

that's a great point.. now if only we knew which countries police we should alert to arrest them! or knew more about them other than "i have x for sale, pay me in bitcoin"

Re:Folks, the writing is on the wall

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's plain as day. WE NEED COMMUNISM NOW! You'd have to be blind not to see it.

Communist zombies? Those are slated for the sequel. Everyone knows you never put communist zombies in the first release.

Re:

[scottbomb]

Becuase it's worked so well everywhere it's been tried, right?

Re:

[baKanale]

Yes, freed from the dead hand of the outmoded capitalist system! Freed by the dead hand of <b><i><u><blink>COMMUNIST!</blink></u></i></b> bureaucracy! Huzzah!

Re:

[Nidi62]

Have you noticed how every attempt towards the "radiant future" has involved the mass starvation and murder of millions of people within the country at the hands of a government that is supposedly the "people's" government? And that "class struggle" was only ended by making everyone in the state poor, with the exception of those directly serving the state in some oppressive capacity by making them only slightly less poor; while at the same time those leading the state make themselves rich and corrupt to le

Re:

[gnick]

Don't know if I've run into any commie zombies, although a large collective collaborating to collect and process resources for the good of the community sounds about right... Now, Nazi zombies [wikipedia.org] I can deliver.

Sweet Creeping Zombie Marx!

[Guppy]

Communist zombies? Those are slated for the sequel. Everyone knows you never put communist zombies in the first release.

"Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your braaaaains..."

Re:

[Ihmhi]

You want Communist Zombies? Here's [vimeo.com] your communist zombies.

Re:

[mywhitewolf]

zombies you pay for aren't just your everyday home PC... at least i hope not, otherwise i've just worked out how I'm going to make millions. but i would imagine the valuable machines are hijacked servers of some description.

Re:

[icebike]

the nature of paying more for zombies in certain areas has been known for years. This fact is not news.

Known to who?

Posting as AC here while hinting you are familiar with the market for zombies?

Priceless.

So?

[cowboy76Spain]

Machines in UK and USA:

• More likely are more powerful than those in other parts of the world, and have a better connection.
• If you are attacking big corporations, activity from these machines is more difficult to identify (one hundred failed logins in BoA from China? Intrussion alert. One thousand failed logins in BoA from USA? Bussiness as usual.).
• Probably if you scan the hard disk you are more interested also in info from the users. Almost everywhere in the world there is people speaking English and who ca

Re:

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Valid points; from my own experience you will also find that client systems from US/Canada/UK? are considered "trusted". With all the junk going out there in the world, a few places are putting in geolocating in there, either blocking users, asking for a second factor, or just scrutinizing their access. It does reduce some of the noise.

Of course proxies, TOR, AOL users, etc, negate some of that but when you had a breach or want to justify your department, you'll do certain things. You take care of the un

Re:

[mlush]

I'm not so sure... Japan [jamaipanese.com] has the highest internet speeds and a more [boingboing.net] computers than the UK and 60% less than the States (correcting for population). I'd have thought a Japanese login is as trustworthy as a UK or US one. I suppose its where the target normally gets its connection from.

Zombies, feh

[Jay Maynard]

There's nothing wrong with a zombie that a Remington 870 can't fix...be it computer or ex-human.

Re:

[rabiddeity]

But what do you do if the computer is headless?

Re:

[Darinbob]

Remember the double tap.

Re:

[Nidi62]

Remember the double tap.

That's why you use a shotgun. No need to double-tap if the zombie no longer has a head.

Re:

[mjwx]

There's nothing wrong with a zombie that a Remington 870 can't fix...be it computer or ex-human.

However the Buckshot over IP BoIP protocol still needs work. Apparently the packets aren't arriving fragmented.

How much?

[characterZer0]

How much does a US zombie go for? If I want to set up a couple VMs to be zombies, to whom do I talk to sell them?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there is a business model no one has thought about yet. Sell your extra CPU cycles and broadband for a fee, cut out the zombies. Do it like all the @home apps are, but with a little fee. Fuck folding proteins or looking for alien life, I want to make me some money with the spare time on my Beowulf bitches.

Re:

[i kan reed]

The problem is that these zombies participate in illegal activities, likke unsolicited commercial email, or DDOS attacks.

Re:

[gnick]

With a couple of exceptions, this doesn't seem completely distinct from using the fact that you left your WAP open to disown any illegal traffic coming to/from your IP address. In one case, you don't know who's using it nor (presumably) explicitly condone its use. In the other case you're being paid (thus condoning use) and although people could buy cycles/bandwidth for completely legitimate purposes, you can reasonably expect that this will not be the general case as people with legitimate uses can pay l

Re:

[icebike]

With a couple of exceptions, this doesn't seem completely distinct from using the fact that you left your WAP open to disown any illegal traffic coming to/from your IP address.

With one of those exception being it is TOTALLY and UTTERLY distinct.

Taking pay to provide service to others when you TOS from your ISP strictly prohibits this is smallest possible infraction.
Taking pay to provide service to someone you know or should have known was engaged in illegal activities makes you an accomplice. Taking the time to set up a Virtual Machine to protect yourself from the illegal activities you allow to happen in the machine you rent out indicates planning and criminal intent.

Forgetting

Re:

[biodata]

Is it illegal to rent out infrastructure which is subsequently used in the commission of a crime, if you didn't know the crime was being committed? For instance, if someone uses the Amazon cloud to participate in something illegal, are Amazon liable?

Re:

[kelemvor4]

I think that probably depends on where you are and who you are. Corporations in the U.S. seem to be largely exempt from laws that individuals must follow these days. If you rent out your pc and some hacker uses it to get into an FBI system, you can expect lots of buttrape in your future. If that same hacker used a Google cloud based system I doubt Eric Schmidt or anyone else at Google is going to have to meet bubba.

Re:

[madhi19]

Have you seen how much Amazon want for an EC2 instance it not exactly cheap. But I could see somebody using cloud servers to host controlling nodes in a big zombie network. You know as a way to isolate yourself and as a quick and dirty way to move over your products to buyers. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing [amazon.com]

Re:

[Opportunist]

Yeah, looking at how the world is running, brains have become a very rare and precious resource. Even the ones that have one don't use it too much lest it gets worn out.

Re:

[Tapewolf]

How can one determine if one's computer is a zombie?

(and please no "well if you run ANY form of windows, you definitely are one" comments)

Traditionally you would look for large amounts of outgoing traffic on the router when the system should be idle.

Re:

[Hatta]

You cannot prove that your computer is not a zombie. Consider the classic Reflections on Trusting Trust [bell-labs.com] by Ken Thompson.

Re:

[deets52]

Well, I thought my network was a zombie wasteland because all the clients were Windows machines, but actually it was just in Garland, TX.

I misunderstood

[OglinTatas]

I thought "US and UK Zombies Demand Top Dollar" meant that the next zombie blockbuster was to be filmed in Croatia

Re:

[kelemvor4]

That's exactly what I was expecting to see when I clicked the link as well.

Re:

[Rhodri Mawr]

Valletta (Malta), Falmouth (Cornwall, England) and Glasgow (Scotland) appear to be the filming sites of World War Z (the Brad Pitt Zombie Movie). Source [bbc.co.uk]

The film is set in Philadelphia, so it would appear that half of the headline is true - the US Zombies obviously demand top dollar, the UK ones less so, as Glasgow is being transformed into Philadelphia for the next fortnight.

Not true!

[wramsdel]

I saw one just the other day on the freeway on-ramp, holding a sign that said "Will work for BRAAAAAAINS!" The article must be talking about those exorbitant consultant zombies. Man, I'll never hire one of those again...talk about unimaginative business plans.

I woke up this morning only to see this story's

[makubesu]

title on top and thought to myself: "Ah, the zombie apocalypse has finally happened, and slashdot has already found a boring story to write about it."

No surprise here

[Nidi62]

The lack of quality brains available in the US and UK means that a properly raised and fed zombie would be very expensive. It's all thanks to the prevalence of reality TV and crap like that. It's rotting brains so much that good brains are hard to come by.