CIOIN

Cybercrime Unsatisfied with stealing bank account information from their victims, cyber criminals steal frequent flyer miles, too. The miles are used as currency among some of the miscreants, according to a report released by the malware fighters at the Kaspersky Lab.

"In one IRCRC [Internet Relay Chat] message, a cyber criminal was selling access to a Brazilian botnet that sends spam in exchange for 60,000 miles, while, in another message, air miles were offered for stolen credit cards," Kaspersky analyst Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky wrote in the company's monthly malware statistics report.

"This coincides with our predictions for 2011 in which we stated that cyber criminals would be interested in all kinds of information and ready to steal absolutely everything," he added.

One of the most remarkable events during this year, the report says, was Google's exclusion of more than 11 million URLRLs from the ".co.cc" domain, which is fourth largest domain in the world. "The reason for such drastic measures was due to the domain’s URLs regularly being used by cyber criminals to spread rogue antivirus programs or conduct drive-by attacks," according to the Kaspersky report.

"The popularity of .co.cc among cyber criminals is explained by the fact that the domain registrar allows third-level domain names to be registered for free or for a very low price," the report noted.

"Our research shows that Google’s offensive has indeed resulted in cyber criminals using the .co.cc domains less frequently; however, they have merely started using the services of other domain zone registrars," it added.

"Therefore," it reasons, "it is difficult to say how successful Google’s campaign has been. There is also the chance that legitimate, law-abiding domain owners have been inadvertently affected by Google’s actions."