How much do computer viruses cost?
Date: March 09, 2004Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By:
Vladivostok, Russia: One pupil tried to trade computer viruses through the Internet. Officer of Department "K" on fighting crimes in high tech field was his first and last customer, department's official website informs.
Early in the year officers took a notice of one advertisement at one regional website: certain young man openly offered CDROMs with computer viruses and hacker software. The insistency of seller was surprising, he posted his ad everyday. He asked only 100 roubles ($3) for each CDROM with malware.
On January 27, 2004, a senior pupil of one of Vladivostok schools, met with the first buyer. Having checked the disk, officers found 320 programs: viruses, software for password cracking, intrusion in other's computers, deleting or suppression of computer data. He is for up to 3 years of custody and 200 thousand of Russian roubles money penalty (about $70 000) according to Article 273 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation. But in the silliness of his tender years, hacker didn't think of jail. Nor did he suspect of law enforcement attention.
Young man accepted without any doubts to meet the customer again. On February 6, he brought another three disks with malware to the place agreed. The fact of illegal sale was entered and unlucky "trader" was detained by law enforcement. New disks contained virus builders besides all other hacker tools, worms, viruses. These builders were designed to create own viruses and set different fucntions in them. According to the arrested, he only downloaded software from the Internet and burnt it on CDROMs. In other words he turned out to be not at all a brilliant hacker but only an enterprising and immoderately self-assured user. However he is to be responsible for his actions anyway.
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