"Megacorp." is a corporate conglomerate inspired by its equally powerful counterparts in science fiction. The artwork is based on a collection of fake websites scraped from internet by the artist duo KairUs. These companies exist only virtually and are used by cyber criminals for phishing attacks or to support scam stories. The "Megacorp." exists therefore as an umbrella company for subsidiary companies that are 100% dummy cooperations. "Megacorp." operates on a global scale and is constantly growing with firms represented in almost every branch of industry. The strategic objectives according to the "Megacorp." Mission statement is to: "offer complete services from one source which can serve the entire market". Accordingly the subsidiary companies cover domestic and international export, real estate agents, insurance companies, law firms, security companies, banks, educational institutions, hospitals, online commerce, economic communities and ministries.The functions of "Megacorp." are presented in the form of an interim report and company visuals. The archieved websites are locally available in the ESC gallery allowing visitors to explore the current fake website repository. By examining the fake websites the artwork reflects both the imaginary and the real world 'megacorps', questioning centralization of power.

During the period from 9th November 2014 to 6th April 2015 the Megacorp. holding was established and acquired its first 1000 affiliated companies. A main requirement for a company acquisition by the Megacorp. holding is that the companies website in question is listed on ‘Artists Against 419 - Fake Sites Database’(1), an online watchmen group related to the vigilante scambaiting communities. Megacorp. can thus be seen as a giant umbrella company for evil businesses with its sources for inspiration in science-fiction(2) and the real world.

As the aqusition of 1000 companies in the first operating year might sound like a major investment, this is only a small part of the Megacorp.’s potential. The ‘Artists Against 419 - Fake Sites Database’ publishes tens of new websites every day, recording mainly websites that are in English language. What potential does the German-, Spanisch- or Chinese-speaking market offer? According to research(3) fake websites comprise nearly 20% of the entire web, and 70% of “.biz” and 35% “.us” domain pages analyzed in a sampling of 105 million web pages were fake. A great deal of our holdings are clones of existing companies published under non-legimite domains. These websites are mostly used for phishing(4), and according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s 2H2014-Report(5) there were at least 123,972 unique phishing attacks worldwide during the second half of 2014, which occurred on 95,321 unique domain names. In view of these numbers, the Megacorp. holding has infinite possibilites to grow, and we envison it to be the most evil conglomerate ever.

Based on a short review of the first 1000 companies that we aquired, we can proudly confirm that we are well on our way to achieving our strategic objectives to offer complete services from one source, which can serve the entire market. We have divided our enterprise into 10 business segments, of which the biggest are ‘Transport and Logistics’ (32.6%), ‘Banking and Finance’ (21.9%) and ‘Online Merchandise and Trade’ (14.2%). It may come as a suprise that the ‘Pet Shops & Animal Transport’ (6.9%) segment has a good chance of being the fourth largest business segment. While most of our companies are definitely into the phishing bussines or eCommerce scams, we also aquired several unique websites supporting more story-driven e-mails scams. One of them is the ‘SDD-solution’ retailers, who promise to wash your black money and render it back into a usable currency (see page 10). Megacorp. operates world wide. That said, we have a strong focus on Europe where 32% of all our companies are based, and especially the greater London area can be considered a major hub for our businesses, hosting 118 of our companies headquarters. A considerable amount (22%) of our companies are purely virtual products of our globalised era and do not have a given location for their activities. As mentioned, our company language is currently restricted to English, and this might limit our presence on some continents, especially Asia’s lucrative market, while aparently the Chinese phishers are responsible for 85% of the domain names that were registered for phishing(5).

This report highlights some key figures of our first 1000 companies, providing a unique insight into our business structure.

Yours Trustfully,

Scarlett Abbot, James A. Husby

Notes:
1) Artists Against 419 - Fake Sites Database available at: http://db.aa419.org/fakebankslist.php

2) Megacorp, is a term popularized by well known science fiction writer William Gibson. A megacorp is a massive conglomerate, holding monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over multiple markets. Well known examples of megacorps are for example: LexCorp (DC Comics), Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner), Weyland-Yutani (Alien franchise), Cyberdyne Systems Corporation (Terminator films) and Omni Consumer Products (Robocop).

3) A. Abbasi, Z. Zhang, D. Zimbra, H. Chen, and J. F. Nunamaker, (2010) “Detecting Fake Websites: The Contribution of Statistical Learning Theory”.

4) Phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

5) Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 2H2014. www.antiphishing.org.