You know if AccountancyAge are reporting it, there’s money involved. According to the bean-counters, organised crime is looking at how it can make money from spam and virus writing, which means attacks may become less common than now but more dangerous. Quoting Russian antivirus expert Eugene Kaspersky, the latest MiMail worms were the first in a new type of attack aimed at deriving financial profit from viruses and malware.
Recent MiMail variants collected and forwarded PayPal account details to the worms’ creators. ‘The business of the mafia is business, and there could be a lot of money to be made from malware and spamming. As they consolidate control, the business of hacking and virus writing they will squeeze out independents. Spam will be an early target,’ he said.
What’s the interest for the mafia? Stealing commercial valuable secrets, bringing down networks for extortion, grabbing money from PayPal accounts.