Hackers Searching for Persons Skilled in Different Languages

According to the report, titled, "One Internet, Many Worlds", prepared by McAfee Inc, hackers are now searching for people with knowledge in other languages so that they can be asked to write computer viruses in different languages.

At McAfee, security researchers, say that advertisements reading, "Wanted: computer virus writers who are fluent in Russian or Mandarin or Portuguese" can be found on underground channels of the Internet as malware developers increasingly seeking programmers who know foreign languages to aid in launching attacks, designed for a specific country.

The report revealed that 67% of total spam is currently authored in English, symbolizing that Internet penetration is rising. This has made attacks designed in languages other than English are more lucrative.

Security Research and Communications Manager, David Marcus, at Santa Clara-based McAfee said that hackers post recruitment ads in two forms: those searching for virus writers who design Websites and write spam in regional languages and those seeking to sell malicious programs written in foreign languages, as reported by SFGate on February 21, 2008.

Marcus also added that not much time is required to craft such stuff. Cyber criminals are looking malware development as a money-generating business and they are looking for ways to build this business internationally.

Meanwhile, hackers have already progressed in spam written in English. During the past nine months spam contained typographic errors and some other kinds of errors but today these are just 10%.

So hackers now want to create grammatically correct Websites and spam mails that will dupe people into revealing personal information or into downloading viruses.

According to the report, the bogus servers often don't return erroneous results and this fools users who believe they are working on the Internet. Therefore, hackers can place users onto malicious Websites whenever they want.

In other instances of localized attacks, hackers are in a better position to target country-specific popular sites and software such as online gaming Websites in China, banking sites in Brazil and peer-to-peer network programs in Japan. They can even launch attacks only in those countries where law enforcement is less strict.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 2/27/2008