What Evil Lies Beneath, Tracking the Hidden Malevolence of Online Pharmacies.
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Abstract
Background:
The advent of online pharmacies has been a boon to health care consumers, and to criminals preying on the ignorance, embarrassment, and frugality of the same consumers. We have been engaged in an effort to systematically document both legitimate and illegitimate online pharmacies. Hundreds, if not thousands, of illegitimate online pharmacies exist that illegally offer regulated goods. These sites engage in a range illegal activities such as monetary theft, identity theft, sale of counterfeit drugs, sale of tainted drugs, and the co-option of consumer computers. According to the United States Federal Trade Commission identity theft alone accounts for tens of billions of dollars in losses. Beyond financial losses, the use of illicit pharmacies can lead to the delay of care for health consumers, use of inappropriate medication, or the use of tainted medication all of which lead to potentially serious health consequences.
Objective:
We are interested in determining where the online pharmacies are hosted, and the motivations of the online pharmacy owners/operators. The ultimate goal is to develop a tool for assessing an arbitrary online pharmacy’s legitimacy and level of danger posed to the consumer. Such a tool could be integrated into web browsers to help protect consumers from predation by illicit pharmacy operators.
Methods:
Based on our experience with manual documentation of sites, we are developing an automated system for visiting online pharmacies with an access pattern similar to a human visitor. During our visits we cache a copy of the portion of the site we visit and the associated site meta-data. Concurrent with visiting the websites, we monitor our system for intrusion attempts. The cached site copy is analyzed offline to determine the origin of the site, if possible the owners of the site, and if any attempts were made to compromise the computer that visited the site.
Results:
Research in Progress
Conclusions:
Research in Progress
The advent of online pharmacies has been a boon to health care consumers, and to criminals preying on the ignorance, embarrassment, and frugality of the same consumers. We have been engaged in an effort to systematically document both legitimate and illegitimate online pharmacies. Hundreds, if not thousands, of illegitimate online pharmacies exist that illegally offer regulated goods. These sites engage in a range illegal activities such as monetary theft, identity theft, sale of counterfeit drugs, sale of tainted drugs, and the co-option of consumer computers. According to the United States Federal Trade Commission identity theft alone accounts for tens of billions of dollars in losses. Beyond financial losses, the use of illicit pharmacies can lead to the delay of care for health consumers, use of inappropriate medication, or the use of tainted medication all of which lead to potentially serious health consequences.
Objective:
We are interested in determining where the online pharmacies are hosted, and the motivations of the online pharmacy owners/operators. The ultimate goal is to develop a tool for assessing an arbitrary online pharmacy’s legitimacy and level of danger posed to the consumer. Such a tool could be integrated into web browsers to help protect consumers from predation by illicit pharmacy operators.
Methods:
Based on our experience with manual documentation of sites, we are developing an automated system for visiting online pharmacies with an access pattern similar to a human visitor. During our visits we cache a copy of the portion of the site we visit and the associated site meta-data. Concurrent with visiting the websites, we monitor our system for intrusion attempts. The cached site copy is analyzed offline to determine the origin of the site, if possible the owners of the site, and if any attempts were made to compromise the computer that visited the site.
Results:
Research in Progress
Conclusions:
Research in Progress
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