ICSI in Naked Security
"An Analysis of the Pay-Per-Install Underground Economy"
September 7, 2011 | Chester Wisniewski, Naked Security
excerpt:
A few weeks ago at the USENIX Security Symposium, researchers Juan Caballero, Chris Grier, Christian Kreibich and Vern Paxson presented their paper "Understanding the Underground Economy," a look into the inner workings of the pay-per-install underground economy. What is pay-per-install? Security researchers use the term to describe one of the most popular malware distribution methods. In the malware economy, criminals have specialized to perform specific services and contract with one another the same as in the legitimate world.
article-date:
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
recap:
Researchers have found that the majority of the most active malware distributors pay third parties to install their malicious software on at least some of the computers they infect.