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Interested in a life of cybercrime?  All it takes is $50.  Researchers at security firm Finjan have discovered that a site called “Golden Cash” is doing a bustling business in the buying and selling of infected computers.  A small botnet of 1,000 malware infested PCs goes for just $50.  That’s a mere 5 cents each! 

The site infects the PCs with their own Golden Cash malware, which allows the purchaser to control the PCs remotely.  The seller is also paid to collect the FTP credentials of as many legit sites as possible.  Other items for sale on the site include rootkits and malicious websites. It’s being called an eBay for cybercrime.

“Criminals have built an eBay that provides everything to the hacker,” Finjan CTO Yuval Ben-Itzhak told InternetNews.com. “People are not even aware their computer is controlled and is an asset that one person is buying and another is selling.”

Once they’ve made their purchase, the budding cybercriminal can add even more malware, send spam, install rogue ant-virus programs (also known as scareware), conducting phishing attacks, hack websites, and more.

The Golden Cash bot seeks out unpatched security holes and uses social engineering tricks to try and dupe people into opening a malicious email attachment.  The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you install any and all security updates issued for IE and keep your anti-virus software up to date.

Read [PCWorld]