I’m sure everyone assumes spam is worth it for spammers. They wouldn’t do it otherwise, right? Of course, the same could be said of the traditional “pyramid scams” and Multi-Level Marketing. They produce benefits. However, the benefits fall on few hands, usually those at the top.
Whether it’s selling Rolexes, Viagra, penis-enlargement pumps, dialer porn, or pump-and-dump stocks, the economic incentive is there.
And all that, not taking into account identity theft, credit card theft or phishing.
I’ve found an interesting post by Joe Stewart with an analysis of a particular pump-and-dump scheme related to the Rustock trojan. It shows how this particular spammer or organization can net a nice $20K over one single weekend just by deploying this spamming-trojan and some stock market knowledge (plus human greed, an important part of this, let’s not forget). Joe comments:
So, at close on Friday Dec 15, the stock is at $0.0011. Suddenly, the Rustock botnet begins spewing out the spam shown above. All weekend it churns away, sending millions of emails. Monday morning, Dec 18, sees the stock immediately rise to $0.0019 a share, then all the way to $0.0025 a share, as some recipients of the spam begin to purchase the stock. A far cry from the spammer′s target of $0.02 a share, but lets see how much that adds up to. If the spammer sells his shares early on Monday, when the stock has peaked, those 11,532,726 shares could be worth nearly $29,000, leaving the spammer with a cool $20K profit for one weekend. I wonder if the spams touting Viagra and Rolexes have ever made that much profit so quickly for the spammers with so little effort and almost zero overhead. It’s little wonder why stock spam is taking over.
Hello All: - Foound rofits of spam and pump-and-dump scams at Security Samizdat looking for scams. Good blog!!