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October 14, 2006
Trojans stealing cookies
Trojans stealing cookies: Many sex sites earn money through referral commissions -- attracting a visitor, then sending them to a site where they might spend money. This revenue stream is apparently the target of new malware installed onto consumer machines. Zango's native-code executable inserts itself into the browser pipeline, changing the record of where the person was. Result: Revenue sites give Zango the commission money. Impacts? Malware writers now have another proven revenue scheme, in addition to extortion and data theft... consumers will become even more skeptical about installing OS-level executable code on their machines... referral-based businesses will have to evolve further. Interesting scam. (The above link from Suzi Turner has a concise overview... Chris Boyd surfaced the story... Ben Edelman concisely details the mechanics (it's not so much swiping cookies as manipulating browser referrals)... all pages linked here are worksafe, although some of the secondary links are not.)
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 14, 2006 9:29 AM