November 11, 2008
What's McAfee up to, do you think?
So, today McAfee went on record with a very strange message. Specifically, they tell us that:
1) Malware is increasingly using Facebook as a vehicle for propagation; and
2) Malware is increasingly targeting virtual commnities (e.g., World of Warcraft, SecondLife) for password stealing
Interesting, but frankly I'm at a loss. This article interested me enough to actually go to the Avert site to try to download the research that this is coming from (which I couldn't find, by the way), but it leaves me wondering what malware authors are smoking. Take WoW for example. The AV folks tell us the motivator is profit. If you hack a WoW account, you get the following:
1 Credit Card number
1 Address
1 Phone Number
1 Username
1 Limited-lifetime account to use for in-game spamming purposes
1000-2000 in virtual currency (say, for the sake of argument, that's worth about 25 dollars to an in-game currency reseller like peonsforhire)
Compare that to the potential for exploitation if your malware targeted bank account information or passwords for online trading accounts. In that case you get:
1 Account number
1 Address
1 Phone Number
Upwards of 1000 dollars in real currency (that can be collected by the malware author for their own nefarious purposes)
If the motivation is profit, I'm just not getting why they would go down this road rather than the bank account road. Am I missing something here? If Avert's numbers are right (and I don't see why they wouldn't be), what's the deal?