$1,600 per spam run a day?
The economics of male enhancement pill spammers have been laid bare by security researcher Dmitry Samosseiko.
Samosseiko, of Sophos, uncovered research that showed how Canadian pharmacy spam punting unlicensed prescription medicines including Viagra is largely the work of partnerka, the Russian affiliates of spam and malware distributors. Google's search results identify 124,000 Canadian pharmacy websites.
The Sophos researcher was able to examine the orders of one such site because cybercroooks had left the system open to scrutiny. He discovered that the average value of an order was $200, with a commission fee of as much as 40 per cent.
Log files also revealed over 20 drug purchases per day per spam campaign, resulting in $1,600 paid in commission fees per day.
