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Spam email is another example. There's a paper from Stefan Savage's group a while back where they were able to estimate overall revenue of a few big spam-gener

Spam email is another example. There's a paper from Stefan Savage's group a while back where they were able to estimate overall revenue of a few big spam-generating pharma/counterfeit product networks, and it looks like the anti-spam industry is vastly bigger than the underground spam-generating industry, and had no desire to shut off the ultimate source of their revenues. There's a reason we don't see many of those emails anymore, and it's not because of any action by anti-spam companies - it's because firms whose products were being counterfeited convinced the credit card companies to shut off the banks handling payments for these purchases. (most evidently went through a couple of banks in I think Azerbaijan) Evidently all the viagra spam was coming from people who also hawked fake Gucci stuff...

gruez 3y ago
>There's a paper from Stefan Savage's group a while back where they were able to estimate overall revenue of a few big spam-generating pharma/counterfeit product networks, and it looks like the anti-spam industry is vastly bigger than the underground spam-generating industry, and had no desire to shut off the ultimate source of their revenues. This doesn't follow. The US army has a vastly bigger budget than the Taliban or Viet Cong, yet it still lost to them. Revenue is only a relevant factor when the battle is symmetric. For spam there's no reason to believe it is. Spammers are basically guerilla fighters because they operate as criminal networks in areas with lax law enforcement. What's the "anti-spam industry" supposed to do? Send in PMCs? >There's a reason we don't see many of those emails anymore Yeah, they've been replaced with phishing emails and scams instead.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok scams too. People copy someone's profile, pretend to be them, say they're them to their friends and ask them for money. With AI voice changers, it even sounds like them.
- mike50 3y ago
  The Viet Cong were being supported by China and the USSR.
rvba 3y ago
Your example doent make sense. Those who spend spam for profit will do it anyway - they dont care if tools that detect spam exist or not. In fact those tools limit the ability of script kiddies to enter. It is a cat and mouse game. A homeless person can steal some electic wires and pipes and fixing it will cost a lot of money. So you say that we shouldnt fix it?
- pjdesno 3y ago
  The root problem is not that I'm receiving spam emails, but that people are sending them. Symantec etc. have no business interest in getting people to stop sending spam emails. In the case of the pharma/counterfeit emails that were so common 10-15 years ago the fix was quite simple, but didn't come from the anti-spam industry - it required finding an aggrieved party (brand owners) with enough clout in the financial world. As you point out, fighting spam is an asymmetric game of whack-a-mole, where spammers can easily adapt to countermeasures. Forcing spammers to get a new merchant bank to handle their credit card transactions flips the asymmetry and makes them do all the work; as a result you no longer see spam advertising viagra. Getting rid of ransomware would be quite easy, in theory, if you could tank the value of bitcoin, since few ransomware gangs are able to collect ransom the traditional way in bags of cash. And a large fraction of other phishing attacks could be prevented by putting stricter controls on gift cards.

gruez 3y ago

>There's a paper from Stefan Savage's group a while back where they were able to estimate overall revenue of a few big spam-generating pharma/counterfeit product networks, and it looks like the anti-spam industry is vastly bigger than the underground spam-generating industry, and had no desire to shut off the ultimate source of their revenues. This doesn't follow. The US army has a vastly bigger budget than the Taliban or Viet Cong, yet it still lost to them. Revenue is only a relevant factor when the battle is symmetric. For spam there's no reason to believe it is. Spammers are basically guerilla fighters because they operate as criminal networks in areas with lax law enforcement. What's the "anti-spam industry" supposed to do? Send in PMCs? >There's a reason we don't see many of those emails anymore Yeah, they've been replaced with phishing emails and scams instead.

fragmede 3y ago
Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok scams too. People copy someone's profile, pretend to be them, say they're them to their friends and ask them for money. With AI voice changers, it even sounds like them.
mike50 3y ago
The Viet Cong were being supported by China and the USSR.

rvba 3y ago

Your example doent make sense. Those who spend spam for profit will do it anyway - they dont care if tools that detect spam exist or not. In fact those tools limit the ability of script kiddies to enter. It is a cat and mouse game. A homeless person can steal some electic wires and pipes and fixing it will cost a lot of money. So you say that we shouldnt fix it?

pjdesno 3y ago
The root problem is not that I'm receiving spam emails, but that people are sending them. Symantec etc. have no business interest in getting people to stop sending spam emails. In the case of the pharma/counterfeit emails that were so common 10-15 years ago the fix was quite simple, but didn't come from the anti-spam industry - it required finding an aggrieved party (brand owners) with enough clout in the financial world. As you point out, fighting spam is an asymmetric game of whack-a-mole, where spammers can easily adapt to countermeasures. Forcing spammers to get a new merchant bank to handle their credit card transactions flips the asymmetry and makes them do all the work; as a result you no longer see spam advertising viagra. Getting rid of ransomware would be quite easy, in theory, if you could tank the value of bitcoin, since few ransomware gangs are able to collect ransom the traditional way in bags of cash. And a large fraction of other phishing attacks could be prevented by putting stricter controls on gift cards.