Malware has evolved into a booming business for cybercrime organizations. With the latest evolution of Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) which is a term use to describe the unlawful leasing of software and hardware for the purpose of conducting cyber -attacks. Although, MaSs typically targets low to medium vulnerabilities, ransomware is estimated to cost the world over $1bn yearly.
Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation sits down with Denis Wilson of DWP Information Architects Inc. to discuss the evolution of Malware and the latest developments.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey nation nation back with Dennis Wilson Dennis with one in out of Southern California looking looking like Southern California a little bit there and that shirt how you
Denis Wilson
do feeling good and having having great weather and nice temperatures it's it's really tough to live here
Harry Brelsford
yeah yeah I hear you guys just having this talk as you know after 32 years and the listeners know it's coming up on two years ago I relocated to Austin same story Austin from roughly now till June is very very nice right a Texas winters very pleasant. And Seattle. God bless them but Seattle can be horrible right? They're headed in this horrible weather down here you know low E low 80s Every day it's it's just nice man.
Denis Wilson
Well, my in laws were in in Austin, and my family's in in the one of the harbor Aberdeen Hoquiam I forget what the harbor that's called down that area. But I mean that's even worse than Seattle is because it's on on the Pacific. It is rainy, rainy, rainy, rainy all the time. It
Harry Brelsford
is, well, hey, let's let's jump into malware as a service. What's going on? That's interesting.
Denis Wilson
Yes, I did did a blog, I ran into this just a couple of days ago, I titled the blog malware as a service is popular in all the wrong places. And I, I just cracked me up because it included all the things that that we would normally put into, you know, selling a product ourselves. And it was it was being handled or being attached to malware. That just it seems odd, it seems wrong. Now, the one in particular I ran into is a malware called erbium, but E R B Ium. erbium, and it hides out as a cheat on video games and therefore, you know, tends to be the the kids that the young, the 20 and 30 year olds that really get into the video games and they're the ones that are being hit by this one. And and principally this thing is, is it says it's affordable, it has excellent customer service, a wide array of of skill sets can be used that in a way that the user will never find out that they've been hacked, it will steal things like passwords, cookies, credit card numbers autofill information cryptocurrency wallet information, and the two factor authentication credentials. And it costs 100 bucks a month and for that you can add this into whatever it is that you're doing and and be in the business of malware be in the business of hacking. It's absolutely nuts.
Harry Brelsford
Man this is yeah, this is disturbing. You know, I mean, I get the humor side of it and all that but it's it's, it's a little bit like if you were a cardiologist, and maybe you were unethical, you would encourage your older patients to eat beef and not trim the fat off the beef. You see where I'm trying to go with this? What would a cardiologist do to increase business when the last thing he wants is the largely vegetarian country of India where people ride bikes and they don't drink right that's the last thing that cardiologist so it's a different it's it's it's a different mentality. But yeah, I guess I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that someone come out with that now how, how were they escaping law enforcement? I mean, you are you know, the the hacker group the activist hack hacker groups that are typically on the good guy side.
Denis Wilson
Yeah, there's there's I forget who it was there was I had the name of the people. It's it's a group that is not very well known, at least to me, that had found out about these guys. It's a pretty new malware actually. It said it's gotten into the US, France, Colombia, Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Mel Malaysia, but that's a relatively small group versus the world. And so it's, it's, uh, it's new, and it's, it looks like it. It's only been out for maybe six weeks. And so it really hasn't has been found yet. I mean that we know it exists, it's there. But it really hasn't, you know, taken over the world yet. But certainly things like this are going to take over the world. I mean, they're talking about good customer service. That was one thing that malware didn't have was any customer service. You know, if you can get customer service with this at a cheap price, why not? You can go into business for yourself and really quick. This, it really is. It's snowing, sort of funny. But it's, you know, as you were saying, it's very, very disturbing, because that means that the stuff that's going to be hitting where I live, is going to be much more difficult to get rid of.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now you always have an interesting topic, that's for darn sure. Well, I'll tell you what, in the spirit of time management, let's let's reconvene next quarter check in figure out what other Oh, hey, one final question. I'm sorry, I suppose. Yeah. Um, you're a long term player in in the Content Strategy area, I draft behind you. And, you know, it takes time we've kind of had this talk. But how's that going? Because you are consistent up on LinkedIn? Is that Is it working for you? To your satisfaction?
Denis Wilson
Yeah, that's the key. Quite, it's working. It's not working into my satisfaction. And and I've I'm actually looking at looking at various players and talking to to the various pundits and see if, if I'm not doing something well, or if it's just, I kind of think that this is a sort of a malaise. That should be hitting everybody. That that. I mean, we're, you know, we're getting a lot of advertising. That is no longer being very effective. And I don't know what is being effective. But I think that the kinds of things that I'm doing with the content and, you know, it has to be there, but there's other stuff that that I should be doing that isn't there and I don't know what it is yet.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah. What would you find out? As Tell me? Oh, yeah, we'll talk about that next quarter. I'll make a note of what for an MSP. Alright, Dennis, thank you, sir.
Denis Wilson
Thank you. Have fun. Bye bye.