Spammers Make Millions Selling Counterfeit Medications Online
The world's most prolific spammers have found that selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals online can generate the most profit and growth potential, according to a report expected to be released today from a top security researcher, the Los Angeles Times reports.
For the last year and a half, Pat Peterson, a security researcher at Cisco Systems, investigated spam sent by Storm, a software application that infects personal computers and uses them to send spam.
In the study, Peterson found that Storm is linked to a Russian drug maker called GlavMed, which produces counterfeit versions of Viagra and other popular drugs in factories in India and China.
About 80% of spam messages offer drugs from Web sites. Most online drug orders will be filled with drugs manufactured in Mumbai, India, or Shanghai, China, that contain 100% to 110% of the advertised dose of the active ingredient, the Times reports (Menn, Los Angeles Times, 6/11).