(1) Software designed to steal personal information or perform some other illegal operation. It is malicious software that causes a crime to be committed. See warez and malware.
(2) Software that helps someone perform an unwanted or illegal act via the computer. Programs and documentation that enable less technical people to set up their own spam, virus or phishing attacks are crimeware, essentially a software development kit for scoundrels. The good news is that the documentation is probably as horrid as that of most popular commercial software.
(2) Software that helps someone perform an unwanted or illegal act via the computer. Programs and documentation that enable less technical people to set up their own spam, virus or phishing attacks are crimeware, essentially a software development kit for scoundrels. The good news is that the documentation is probably as horrid as that of most popular commercial software.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- Spooky Halloween - scareware or crimeware?
- Who's to be scared?Which platforms are affected by the things that you mentioned Conficker and rogue AV scareware? Please let us know the whole picture so it is clear who needs to be concerned about this and who doesn't!Thank you in advance.I cosign n/t.While you're...
- Discussion threads 2009-10-29
- Spooky Halloween - scareware or crimeware?
- With all the "spooky" cybercrime trends taking place on a monthly basis, such as the death of CAPTCHA, the suspicious idleness of the Conficker botnet, the clear presence of government-tolerated and upcoming government-sponsored botnets, the inevitable migration from using malicious infrastructure to entirely relying on legitimate one, followed by the...
- Blog posts 2009-10-29
- Commonwealth fined $100k for not mandating antivirus software
- According to a recently published SEC cease-and-desist order, the Commission has recently fined Commonwealth Financial Network $100,000, for not mandating antivirus software on the computers of its representatives, leading to a security incident which took place in November 2008, allowing the cybercriminal behind the attack to place eighteen unauthorized purchase...
- Blog posts 2009-10-19
- Modern banker malware undermines two-factor authentication
- Once pitched as an additional layer of security for E-banking transactions, two-factor authentication is slowly becoming an easy to bypass authentication process, to which cybercriminals have successfully adapted throughout the last couple of years. Modern banker malware, also known as crimeware, is now fully capable of bypassing...
- Blog posts 2009-09-23
- Citizens Financial sued for insufficient E-Banking security
- If a fraudulent transaction ever takes place on one of your bank accounts due to their compromise, who's to blame - the bank, for not providing you as a customer with state-of-the-art security mechanisms that could have prevented it, or you, as a customer whose insecure online behavior led to...
- Blog posts 2009-09-10
- Cutwail botnet spamming 'IRS unreported income' themed malware
- Researchers from MX Logic -- now part of McAfee -- have intercepted a new malware campaign spammed by the Pushdo/Cutwail botnet, that's using an 'IRS unreported income' notices in an attempt to trick the recipients into downloading a tax-statement.exe executable. The Pushdo/Cutwail botnet remains among the most...
- Blog posts 2009-09-10
- Brazilian ID thieves using Twitter as botnet command channel
- Arbor Networks security researcher Jose Nazario has stumbled upon a crimeware botnet using Twitter as its command-and-control operation. The botnet, which is linked to identity thieves in Brazil, uses Twitter status messages to communicate with bots -- sending new links for the infected computers to contact and...
- Blog posts 2009-08-13
- Researchers demo wireless keyboard sniffer for Microsoft 27Mhz keyboards
- Researchers from Remote-Exploit.org, the home of the BackTrack pen-testing Linux distribution, have recently released an open source wireless keyboard sniffer Keykeriki, capable of sniffing and decoding keystrokes of Microsoft 27Mhz based keyboards through on-the-fly deciphering of XOR based encryption. Their wartyping -- decoding signals from wireless keyboards...
- Blog posts 2009-06-12
- Microsoft study debunks profitability of the underground economy
- Cybercrime, what cybercrime and millions of dollars in profits?! A newly released paper presented by Cormac Herley and Dinei Florencio at this year's Workshop on the Economics of Information Security 2009 entitled "Nobody Sells Gold for the Price of Silver: Dishonesty, Uncertainty and the Underground Economy" debunks...
- Blog posts 2009-06-05
- Email service provider: 'Hack into our CEO's email, win $10k'
- A newly launched startup called StrongWebMail is aiming to add a new layer of secure authentication for its customers - phone verification prior to logging in and alert services for potential email compromises. The company is in fact so confident in its approach that it's currently offering...
- Blog posts 2009-06-02
- Inside the botnets that never make the news - a gallery
- If you ever wanted to take an inside view of targeted-botnets primarily run by novice cybercriminals sometimes utilizing outdated, but very effective methods - this ZDNet photo gallery is for you. It offers an inside view of those "beneath the radar" botnets that never make the news....
- Blog posts 2009-05-20
- Conficker's estimated economic cost? $9.1 billion
- In a recent blog post, the Cyber Secure Institute claims that based on their previous studies into the average cost of such malware attacks, the economic loss due to the Conficker worm could be as high as $9.1 billion. Despite that their analysis also considered a much...
- Blog posts 2009-04-23
- Inside BBC's Chimera botnet
- Earlier this month, the controversial BBC purchase of a botnet and modifying the infected hosts in the name of "public interest" sparked a lot of debate on the pros and cons of their action. Condemned by certain security vendors, and naturally, at least from guerrilla PR perspective, applauded and encouraged...
- Blog posts 2009-03-30
- New study details the dynamics of successful phishing
- Can you teach an old employee new phishing protection tricks? In a recently presented study by the Intrepidus Group, the company behind the PhishMe.com spear phishing awareness service allowing companies to ethically attempt to phish their employees on their way to build security awareness, presents some interesting...
- Blog posts 2009-03-10
- News to know: RIM, Facebook TOS, Apple-Adobe, Android
- Here are today’s notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily. For continuous updates see BNET’s around-the-Web tech coverage Andrew Nusca: SEC charges RIM, 4 senior execs with stock option backdating Sam Diaz: Facebook's TOS debacle: Be upset...
- Blog posts 2009-02-18
- Crimeware tracking service hit by a DDoS attack
- Crimeware tracking service hit by a DDoS attackDDos ProtectionYpigsfly ddos proxy service works, can be implemented in minutes and is afforadable at as little as $500
- Discussion threads 2009-02-17
- Crimeware tracking service hit by a DDoS attack
- A week after a newly launched crimeware tracking service went public, cybercriminals didn't hesitate to prove its usefulness by launching a distributed denial of service attack DDoS against it. According to the Swiss security blog, the Zeus tracker came under attack from a previously known source that also attacked abuse.ch...
- Blog posts 2009-02-17
- Today's Cybercrime and the Crimeware Being Used to Support It
- Businesses are under constant threat from crimeware as hackers are using highly sophisticated web-based techniques and methods to exploit the vulnerabilities within the internet. These web-based threats are being found in common applications that security executives need to monitor and control in order to prevent abuse of their systems. The...
- Webcasts 2009-01-01
- Trusteer launches search engine for malware configuration files
- Trusteer's recently launched "Attack Trace" search engine aims to help financial institution by letting them search through the configuration files of popular banker malware SilentBanker, WSNPOEM/Zeus/PRG/Zbot and Torpig in order for them to verify whether or not their sites are targeted. And while the search engine is a marketable way...
- Blog posts 2008-12-05
- Password stealing malware masquerades as Firefox add-on
- Malware researchers at BitDefender are reporting on a newly discovered malware (Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B) that when once dropped in Firefox's add-ons directory starts operating as such, and attempts to steal accounting data from a predefined list of over a hundred E-banking sites. Once the accounting data is obtained, it's forwarded to a...
- Blog posts 2008-12-04
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