Interview with an adware author

[40hz]

A very interesting interview, courtesy of Sherri Davidoff on her philosecurity blog.

Interview with an Adware Author

Jan 12th, 2009 by sherri

Matt Knox, a talented Ruby instructor and coder, talks about his early days designing and writing adware for Direct Revenue. (Direct Revenue was sued by Eliot Spitzer in 2006 for allegedly surreptitiously installing adware on millions of computers.)

Link: http://philosecurity.org/2009/01/12/interview-with-an-adware-author

I found one comment made by Matt Knox to be particularly telling:

It’s hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

A cautionary tale for all.