Spammers Find Big Profits in Fake Drugs

A study done by Cisco Systems has found that the world’s most prolific spammers are making big profits in hawking fake prescription drugs. Their operations use the same cutting edge technology that legit and profitable companies like Amazon.com do. About 80% of all spam now is for fake pharmacies like MyCanadianPharmacy, which takes in over a hundred million dollars a year. People who fall for the ads receive pills from India, or from GlavMed, which manufactures fake versions of popular drugs like Viagra.

        ”The perpetrators are what I call the Bill Gateses of cyber-crime,” said Pat Peterson, a security researcher at Cisco Systems Inc.”Gates succeeded not because he was smart, a great engineer or a good businessman, but because he had all of those qualities and an innovative entrepreneurial spirit as well,” Peterson said. “That’s what we see here.’

Spammers and scammers have become self sustaining businesses with budgets, R&D departments and more, and now with the technology to create massive botnets like Storm and their increasing ability to outwit filters and security features, look for the spam problem to get worse before it gets better.