Malware as business
Forbes.com tries to dissect the nature of malware business. Thomas Holt, an assistant professor in the criminal justice department at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, gave a speech at DefCon 2007 regarding the ever-evolving malware phenomena in his study "The Market of Malware". Holt has been participating in hacker forums for some time in order to get insider information on how the malware market works.
According to the results of the study, hacker forums work in a way similar to eBay, where hackers from around the world share and discuss various malicious codes scripts and their effective implementation/marketing. The discussions on the improvement of malware advertising are also abundant. T. Holt has even managed to find out that hackers actually offer post-sales services to their customers: DOS-based spam exploits are sold for $50 to $100/hour, while the market for such exploits has grown tremendously over last several years. A hacker who is selling malware can potentially earn a good fortune if he/she is smart enough.
Such tendencies in the world of malware development and marketing clearly show that malware may not only be a profitable business, but that the prospect of its further growth is inevitable.
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