Quote:
Originally Posted by Fotoman
So it only takes 400 purchases to take unknown Vietnamese (it was cyrilic-titled books in the Canadian store) book apps from total obscurity to he top of the charts? And since several iTune stores in different country showed remarkably similar behavior on the 4th, were these 400 accounts spread around the world making the total # of sales required to move from obscurity to the top even smaller than 400?
I didn't realize that sales were that slow...
There is obviously a lot of speculation and no plausible details coming from the only people who truly know--Apple. I've read all the same reports but also used my head... There is no frigging way it was only 400. That is spin that is being happily gobbled up and repeated by those more susceptible to Apple's charm.
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There's a difference between the "Books" section of the app store (which are filled with tons of garbage one-off apps and only a handful of really nice apps like an interactive Alice in Wonderland, for example), and the iBook store. The books section of the store is extremely slow.
Posting up apps and then using hacked accounts to funnel money to themselves has been going on for awhile. It's news now because this was a larger effort done all in one weekend. The accounts themselves were probably cracked awhile back and the passwords kept around for a single attack.
Doing this and attacking on a Saturday that is part of an extended holiday weekend just means it takes that much longer in order for the owner of the account to regain control of it. It's the same tactic gold sellers are using in WoW right now. A big chunk of accounts get taken over every holiday weekend as they get 3 days to exploit the accounts before they get returned to their owners instead of 2. They'll save up quite a few accounts to make that extra day worth it.
I'm not terribly surprised this is happening. Zombie networks make brute forcing weaker passwords feasible, and there's profit in selling these accounts to others. In the end, the guys running the botnets to get these passwords are the ones making the real profit, while scammers like this one pay for the passwords and then get caught trying to use them.