Symantec are they for real?

Hi, from New scientist comes this comment:-
Jeremy Ward, service development manager at Symantec, says virus writers can make good money by selling botnets to online extortionists and spammers.

"What we're seeing now is malware, or malicious software, that is truly professional," Ward told New Scientist. "You have the ability to set up botnets for a number of money-making schemes."

Am I the only one to find this comment extraordinary? How does this guy know this and if he does why aren't law enforcement agencies aware of his obvious intelligence on the subject. You see in order to make this statement as factual you would need to know how the money is transferred and who funds the malware development , this is supposed to be beyond law enforcement capability (if it exists then law enforcement cannot currently prevent it presumably because they are unable to track it ) Yet here we have a spokes person for the greatest beneficiary of malware telling us that this happens. Me I smell a RAT.

I have read several articles regarding the suspicion's that surround 'some' Anti Virus companies relating to the possibility that they,themselves(or hired miscreants)may be writing viri just so the AV company can gain a positive reputation(and mo' money), when they report them and offer a 'fix'.

Would be kind'a like an automobile tire Mfg. hiring someone to throw tacks on the highway so as to increase their income! :p

Does this actually happen?
http://features.slashdot.org/feature....shtml?tid=166
Who knows?
But,as the article above says,and also the thing with jpg's having a 'virus' threat has come back to haunt us once again!


(The 'Shadow' knows :rolleyes: )

Sniff-sniff,,,do I smell rat droppings? :eek:

A visit to the dark side of the internet will find you looking at Malware that the antivirus co's are still to discover..
Some of the items found on these site only show on the AV sites many months after their release... these Bots have been around for several years.. they are nothing new.. And with Organised Crime now financing malware coders.. yep they're now getting better written..

As for the AV co's writting the stuff or bankrolling the coders.. No .. well not anymore.. there were strong suspicions that KAV , Norton and McAfee did in the early days.. but not now.. even the hint of that sort of activity would have their stocks frozen..

do a hunt on a old skrit-kiddie toy like Optix or Beast.. you will find sites that talk about malware and their activities will curl your toes.. the AV coes are not even close to having all their bases covered..

Cheers

It's not idle speculation; a German computer magazine (c't I think) actually went and bought a 10,000-host botnet and wrote a story about it.

The enforcement problem comes from the fact that a lot of it is bounced offshore through countries which can't or don't want to pursue it -- there's only so much US authorities can do when a site is hidden behind a network of trojaned boxes in Eastern Europe.