Spyware-based identity theft ring uncovered

Found on ArsTechnica on Friday, 05 August 2005
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Researchers from a little-known security software company named Sunbelt Software have seemingly uncovered a criminal identity theft ring of massive proportions. According to one of their employees, Alex Eckelberry, during the course of one of their recent investigations into a particular Spyware application—rumored to be called CoolWebSearch—they've discovered that the personal information of those "infected" was being captured and uploaded to a server.

One can only speculate about why someone would do such a thing; the amount of data that could be gathered would almost certainly be daunting for even a few people to sift through and exploit. On the other hand, the researchers at Sunbelt have personally uncovered the personal information of two individuals who, combined, could be taken for well over US$350,000.

The researchers initially had tried in vain to get ahold of someone who could take action on this issue but didn't get a response right away:

We have notified the FBI, but of course no response (too busy doing other more important things). We have notified a few of the parties involved...If anyone has any other ideas, send 'em to us. Right now, we're sitting upon literally thousands of pages of stolen identities that are being used right now.

The FBI probably had more important things to do, like hunting filesharers. I have removed CWS from someone's machine twice (some people never learn) and I can confirm that it's a nasty bit of spyware. Never had it myself though. It also looks like the feds went into action after this hit the news; normally, they should already be working on it.