Lots of discussion recently regarding all of the issues with pirates. These are the real kinds, not the Johnny Depp kind and not the kind that wear patches and fly the jolly-roger. The pirates I’ve been thinking about recently though are those of the software and digital content kind.
I had a friend recently tell me not to buy a CD that I was interested in because he had a copy of it and he would let me borrow. Although they didn’t tell me to go burn the disc so I would avoid buying it, but that’s the impression I got. …read more

For the first time, Symantec Corp. publicly released a detailed report of its findings about the “Underground Economy” (cyberworld) through its observations between July 2007 and June 2008. Though this report was released nearly two months ago, I came across it only now.
Read the Symantec Report on the Underground Economy or listen to the corresponding Symantec podcast by Zulfikar Ramzan, the Security Technology & Response Technical Director.
Symantec estimates the value of total advertised goods on the underground servers as up to $276 Million and this figure is from only the underground they had access to. Mr. Ramzan said in the …read more