Russian pirate market

[-freon-]

I read that article about the piracy in Russia at mosnews and I can tell you it is no joke. I spent a month in Russia earlier this year. The Ruble was 26 to $1 when I was there.
Most games, music, and movies were about 50 rubles. High end apps like 3D Studio Max went for about 100-200 rubles. Windows, Office, Macromedia Studio MX, Photoshop, etc were 50-100 rubles.
These guys were everywhere, right out in the open, and obviously not worried about getting into trouble. Their booths had all their games and apps on display, right in your face just like a regular software store. Some even had computers at their booth and were willing to show you the installer worked, and even show you it was in the language you desired.

 

[Scheizekopf]

Nice.

Sorry.

 

[Minishark]

Yeah, it happens. And there's not a whole lot we can do about it. Sorry?

 

[Ice Czar]

Nice.

I would actually buy stuff there.

technically falls under the encourage clause (18)
just for reference a very minor infraction
but a warning here precludes others (hint)

on topic

if you are ever the victim of a real brain behind the malware, its damn near impossible to detect a rootkit without matching up traffic patterns to activity
(read snort ect)
most anything signiture based or heuristic that would tip the hand is removed

No kidding. I nearly lost my job over a rootkit. Heres the story:

I basically assume sysadminship at a technology consulting firm, and one of my first tasks was to renovate the stale and depriciated network of the company's #3 client. Well, I can't wipe the server and go from 2000>2003 yet, so I find myself getting the PCs on XP, redoing group policy, etc. Well, they continued having break-ins including loss of data, spam being relayed through their mailserver(checked the SMTP logs and found "Administrator" was sending it ). All sorts of general mayhem ensued there, and no one could figure out why. I was almost fired because I could not get the breaches under control.

It turns out that the previous tech guy had been running keygens from the server, and thats how a rootkit got installed. Had I not found the keygens in an obscure folder, it would have taken me even longer to figure it out. This was enough to warrant moving to 2003 immediately, as neither of the 2000 servers could be trusted (both tested positive for the rootkit).

So please folks, remember that rootkits remain one of the greatest evils of the networked age. You don't know the computing practices of everyone on the machine, and thus assumptions anymore are hard to make.