Criminals try to "copyright" malware
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Even criminal hackers want to protect their intellectual property, and they've come up with a method akin to copyrighting - with an appropriate dash of Internet thuggery thrown in.
....To maximize that profit, the software analyzed by Symantec's researchers contained the following rules:
-The customer can't resell the product, examine its underlying coding, use it to control other bot nets or submit it to antivirus companies and agrees to pay the seller a fee for product updates.
-The threat: Violate the terms, and we'll report you ourselves to the antivirus companies by giving them information about how to dismantle your bot network or prevent it from growing bigger.
While not legally binding, the terms amount to a novel way to protect ill-gotten profits - except that by ratting out their customers, malware authors risk drawing attention to their own enterprises and giving antivirus makers clues on combatting them....
