One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer'

reply to post by I.C. Weiner


The removal tools are for virus that have been designed to avade the major AV brands software specificly, remeber the AV software is out there for the virus writers to examine in great detail if they want to and they do.

As for the phishing emails sent to customers whos protection is about to run out: *example* could be due to stolen "renewal" lists, unfortunaly the sales staff that work for these AV companys arnt as pc savvy as the coders they work for. I could even go as far as to surgest somone with the info might even sell it directly! poeple are bought everyday unfortunaty. Just a possible idea as to how that could have happend, admitedly it doesnt look good for the av company, however if you were writing virus wouldnt you want that?!

remeber lists, contacts, credit info - all is for sale somwhere for some cost, esspesially amongst the cyber theifs.

reply to post by Biigs


The removal tools I am talking about are the ones to remove the antivirus software. Nortons and McAfee are notorious for being difficult to completely uninstall. And the emails I have seen from clients are coming from the antivirus companies, I checked the email headers.

But yes, everything is for sale on the webernetz.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


As one of those US hackers that does not work for the FBI, or any other gov agency, but yet IS on the inside of the infosec community at a very high level, I will tell you that the picture you paint is laughingly incorrect...

What is true, is that most hackers in the US are incredibly patriotic...

Since the US just declared war on hackers, does this mean that the USA declared a war on the FBI?

reply to post by DaddyBare


Amazing Daddybare knows his stuff and nobody but me gave the dude a star. Truth is script kiddies are far from hackers real hackers write codes and can spot holes in security which they can breach using code opening ports and they shouldn't get past encryption unless they know the key which would require getting past the password of an admin " impossible" unless its an inside job. Using a key logger thumb drive could get a key for encryption easy also could get the password of a admin. Most likely a real hacker once broken in will load all the comps with a virus that zombiefys the computer. That means they have no control over their computer and it proceeds to do what ever action the hacker programmed it to do when the time is right. A mass dos attack is most likely dos = "denial of service" once that's done it can knock down a server causing millions in lost revenue.

Originally posted by pcrobotwolf
reply to post by DaddyBare

 

Amazing Daddybare knows his stuff and nobody but me gave the dude a star. Truth is script kiddies are far from hackers real hackers write codes and can spot holes in security which they can breach using code opening ports and they shouldn't get past encryption unless they know the key which would require getting past the password of an admin " impossible" unless its an inside job. Using a key logger thumb drive could get a key for encryption easy also could get the password of a admin. Most likely a real hacker once broken in will load all the comps with a virus that zombiefys the computer. That means they have no control over their computer and it proceeds to do what ever action the hacker programmed it to do when the time is right. A mass dos attack is most likely dos = "denial of service" once that's done it can knock down a server causing millions in lost revenue.

A DDOS or DOS attack is a program, mainly used by Script Kiddies, a favorite tool for Anon...

Double Post...

Originally posted by Tygart
A DDOS or DOS attack is a program, mainly used by Script Kiddies, a favorite tool for Anon...

DDOS is denial of service attacks where you send massive amounts of pings to a server
DOS is a command line interface

two completely unrelated things

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Not necessarily, DOS is a denial of service done by a single node, DDOS is a distributed denial of service which uses multiple computers and connections to more reliably carry out the attack and make it exponentially more difficult to deal with.
And yes, most of the individuals that get caught are script kiddies since the 90s when people started becoming more educated on tracing techniques and started using spoofed macs/ips, proxies, etc. Script kiddies use already discovered but unpatched vulnerabilities and usually prewritten scripts (like metasploit) to access systems without having a real understanding of how they are doing it. Real hackers find their own vulnerabilities (the infamous 0-days) to gain access through their own methods/scripts making the attack much harder to defend against (because it could exploit old technology or be an entirely new attack vector). The real hackers will rarely get caught because they have the knowledge and understanding to make sure they defend themselves first, the ones that get caught are the people who download a program to do their job for them.

Originally posted by DaddyBare
reply to post by ModernAcademia

 

Most Hackers are script kiddies...
they have no real knowledge of writing code (Viruses)

I think this level of thinking is becoming outdated. Yes script kiddies are by definition n00bs and don't generally contribute anything to the scene other than random mischief. What is overlooked here is that the tool sets and knowledge available today is increasingly more powerful and simplified. One doesn't need any skills to inflict a lot of damage if they so choose. My point here is that while your assessment is correct their actions can be effective...reckless no doubt, but effective.

brill

When the news that Anon members have been exposed remember this thread!

Originally posted by Biigs

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
Think of anti-virus companies, that's a billion dollar industry
What would happen if there were no more viruses?
Trend Micro, Symantec, Kaspersky, Computer Associates, McAfee, Cisco and so many others, all these massive companies would make so much less money if there weren't so many viruses, so of course they are part of it.

I work for an anti virus company and i know alot of the virus analysts, most of the new viruses are from 3rd world countries who target weak and outdated computers.

The most common 'virus's arnt realy viruses, just simple emails that lead to compramised servers that try to steal info from your machine somtimes using tojan attempts etc.

A majority of the anti-virus industry is there to protect the user from their own stupidity, sadly the internet moves fast and there are few who understand it well enough to get without personel security software.

I wont mention which company i work for, but i can assure you there is no underground basement room where the virus busters go on their lunch break to write some more viruses.

Since the internet is a very anonomous domain its highly unsupprising that hackers will out each other to save their own butts when threatend with very real prison sentences.

I fail to see how working for an anti-virus company gives you the knowledge to say that none of those companies creates viruses.

Hate to break it to you, but 99.99999% of the employees of a company that did do that would not be informed that the company was doing it.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


Captaintyinknots, yeah i realise that.

I only mentioned it BECASUE i have been in AV busniess for 5 years, i thought i would say what i know (or not know ), rather than just browsing the thread and not saying anything at all.

If viruses started as a con, its certinly very real now.

Hackers and the need for firewalls, net secutiry and other softwares has little to do with viruses these days, unless its a specificly desgined virus/trojan.

The DDOS attacks from anon and lolsec are likly to be either hired or "borrowed" botnets, constructed from machines the world over with a net connection and the virus deployed, also harder to detect the botnet virus while its dormant. Potentially if you could find them (botnet owner) and you got the cash, you too can hire a botnet attack on a web site or IP range, its against the law in every way so dont even try.

So to recap, just spreading my exp and thoughts, i of course accept that i might too be in the dark about some things.