Gold Medalist is Spyware King
An Olympic Gold Medalist is hailed on television as being an entrepreneur and a millionaire, who split his time between training for the slopes and by running a business. He even drives a $300,000 Lamborghini. What is his company? Popup advertisements and spyware.
There’s already a tarnish on the gold medal won by Australian mogul skier Dale Begg-Smith at the Olympics in Turin this week.
While the 21-year-old Begg-Smith may not have been involved in doping or cheating on the slopes, the way he richly supported himself while training was incredibly unsportsmanlike and probably illegal: Begg-Smith was a key player in a company that infected other peoples’ computers with adware a.k.a. spyware.
Other sketchy sites associated with Begg-Smith include newtopsites.com, huntfly.com, and adultexpressview.com.
One of Begg-Smith’s most harmless Internet businesses was Thin Air Sports, through which he apparently tried to sell used ski gear, including jackets and other clothing worn during national competitions.
Typical of shady Internet businesses, CPM Media and AdsCPM don’t include any detailed company information at their web sites. Their domain registrations generally list a post-office box (PO Box 8978) in Moscow, Idaho.
Computer Associates, an AV company, lists some details of Begg-Smith’s fine software here, which goes on to detail how it installs keylogger software so it can steal passwords, and installs software without the knowledge of the computer user. In addition, such software is installed by using vulnerabilities in the local PC. Compromising systems in the United States without the knowledge of the users is a crime.
And having to clean up networks due to the recklessness of spyware writers ought to be a crime too.
