Chuck Miller September 30, 2009

An industry built on serving adware has become a full-fledged malware distribution channel, with a thriving underground economy, according to researchers at SecureWorks.

The business model is known as pay-per-install (PPI), and profits by recruiting “affiliates” willing to facilitate malware installation on victims' computers.

According to a new report from the SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit titled "The Underground Economy of the Pay-Per-Install Business," the method begins when an affiliate interested in building a network of infected computers signs up to a PPI site and receives files from the PPI provider.

In the past, such sites typically served as the breeding ground for adware distribution, but now criminals are recruiting opportunists so they can receive more-pernicious malicious code.

Spotted here