{"id":50295,"date":"2012-05-17T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=50295"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:02:03","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T07:02:03","slug":"flashback-mac-malware-made-creators-r116000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/50295-flashback-mac-malware-made-creators-r116000.html","title":{"rendered":"Flashback Mac malware made creators R116,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/strong>Flashback, a malware that infected over 600,000 Mac computers at its peak, earned its creators $14,000 (R116,270.38) over a three week period &#8211; however, the developers weren\u2019t able to cash in.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on the company blog, <a title=\"Symantec\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/286761-Symantec\">Symantec<\/a> said that the pay-per-click provider that was used by the Flashback creators spotted the activity and flagged it as fraudulent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany (pay-per-click) providers employ anti-fraud measures and affiliate-verification processes before paying. Fortunately, the attackers in this instance appear to have been unable to complete the necessary steps to be paid,\u201d the post said.<\/p>\n<p>The advertising component of Flashback was only installed on 10,000 of the estimated 600,000 infected computers.<\/p>\n<p>This led to 10 million ads being displayed by the malware, but only 400,000 were clicked on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn other words, utilising less than 2 percent of the entire botnet, the attackers were able to generate $14,000 in three weeks, meaning that if the attackers were able to use the entire botnet, they could potentially have earned millions of dollars a year,\u201d noted Symantec.<\/p>\n<p>Flashback is a form of malware designed to access passwords and other user information though web browsers, and is installed when users mistake it for a legitimate web browser plug-in.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story at: <a title=\"Cnet news site\" href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-13579_3-57435866-37\/flashback-makers-missed-out-on-their-payday-symantec-says\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cnet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Flashback malware installed on Mac machines generated R116,000 for its creators<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":24671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[10488,11739,801,411],"class_list":["post-50295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-flashback","tag-mac-malware","tag-malware","tag-symantec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50297,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50295\/revisions\/50297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}