The Cost of Anonymizing a Cybercriminal's Internet Activities

What would the perfect traffic anonymity service provider targeting cybercriminals consist of? A service operating in Russia that is on purposely not logging any of its user's activities, next to allowing direct spamming from the socks servers, automatic rotation of the VPN servers which they operate in a RBN style hosting provider, or a service using actual malware infected hosts as VPN tunnels not only securing the cybercrime traffic, but also, forwarding the responsibility for the malicious activities to the end user?

Long gone are the days of socks chaining, the practice of automatically connecting to multiple malware infected hosts in order to use them as stepping stones, in between the rest of the malicious activities going on their behalf.

The possibilities for building point-to-point or server-to-multiclient encrypted tunnels between malware infected hosts by using already available Socks5 functions has always been there. As of August, the coders behind a relatively popular web based malware originally started as a DDoS kit, but later on started introducing new features on a "module basis", they have started offering a BETA module for building a VPN network of malware infected hosts, including an admin panel for reselling access to these hosts in order to better monetize their botnet.

This VPN-owning of malware infected hosts is not only resulting in improved anonymity for botnet masters and anyone else having access to the network, but is also contributing to the growth of VPN services designed specifically to be accessed by cybercriminals created on the foundatiosn of such admin panels offering easier reselling of access to the network.

So, what's the cost of anonymizing a cybercriminal's Internet activities? Starting from $40 and going to $300 for a quarter of access, with the price increasing based on the level of anonymity added.

Quality Assurance in Malware Attacks - Part Two

Surprisingly, while opportunistic cybercriminals have long embraced the malware as a service model, and are offering managed lower detection rate services for a customer's malware, or DIY ones where the customer can take advantage of popular tools ported to the Web, others are still trying to innovate at a faddish market niche - multiple offline AV scanners tools aiming to ensure that their malware doesn't end up in the hands of vendors/researchers.

Multiple offline AV scanning tools like this very latest release, naturally using pirated copies of popular antivirus software, are faddish, due to the fact that during the last two years, the underground has been busy working on several paid web based services, that not only make sure vendors and researchers never get the chance to obtain the samples, but also, are already offering scheduled scanning of malware and automatic ICQ/Jabber notifications for QA of the campaign, next to the rest of unique features disintermediating legitimate multiple AV scanning services.

Certain features within such services clearly speak for the intentions of the people behind the service. For instance, among one of these features is the ability to fetch a binary from a set of given dropper URLs like malwaredomain.com/binary.exe, the result of the scan can then alert the malware campaigner about the current state of detection.

What's on these proprietary multiple AV scanning service's to-do list? Let's say anything that a legitimate multiple AV scanning service would never offer, like the following according to one of the services in question :

- DIY heuristic scanning level settings for each of the software in place
- upcoming sets of anti spyware and personal firewalls with detailed statistics of the sandboxing
- behavior-based detection results

The possibilities for integrating such proprietary multi AV scanning services within the QA process of a malware campaign are countless, and both, the customers and the sellers seem to have realized the potential of this ecosystem.