Spam operations by illegal online pharmaceutical supply chain generates $150 million annually

Dubai: IronPort Systems, provider of enterprise spam, virus, and spyware protection and a Cisco Systems subsidiary, revealed a link between malware botnets and illegal pharmaceutical supply chain businesses that recruit botnets to send spam that promote their websites.

Updates to IronPort's 2008 Internet Security Trends Report confirmed that Storm and other botnet spam were found to be profiting from commissions offered by illegal pharmaceutical traders for online advertising of their products.

The study further said the spam operation generates up to $150 million in revenues annually. IronPort's research revealed that more than 80 per cent of Storm botnet spam advertise online pharmacy brands; the spam is transmitted via a network of personal computers infected by the Storm worm Trojan using several sophisticated social engineering tricks and web-based exploits.

The report showed that spam templates; "spamvertized" uniform resource locators; website designs; credit card processing; product fulfilment; and customer support were being provided by a Russian criminal organisation that operates in conjunction with Storm. This criminal organisation recruits botnet spamming partners to advertise their illegal pharmacy websites, which receive a 40 percent commission on sales orders.