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The World's Biggest Botnets
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Nov 08, 2007 08:19 PM
from the poised-to-strike dept.
from the poised-to-strike dept.
ancientribe writes "There's a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow the notorious Storm away in size and sophistication, according to researchers, and it's a direct result of how Storm has changed the botnet game, with more powerful and wily botnets on the horizon. This article provides a peek at the 'new Storm' and reveals the three biggest botnets in the world (including Storm) — and what makes them tick and what they are after."
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Does it run on Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Does it run on Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Does it run on Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Does it run on Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Well.... (Score:2, Insightful)
You dont know how much I would appreciate a "Internet License" to show basic security and protections on the net. WIth the financial nets and traffic nets as they are, I'd say that hauling a 2 tom missle down a highway and doing this would be similar.
You Sank My Enterprise! (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, but you fail it!
In other words, stupid people and people who dont care about security punish the rest of us. How nice. You dont know how much I would appreciate a "Internet License" to show basic security and protections on the net.
Anyone who thinks non free software can be secured should be denied said license. FTFA:
Re:You Sank My Enterprise! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think you can do better than Fortune 100 support teams, you are sorely mistaken. They have all the time, money and employees they want to throw at this problem and still get their ass kicked. People trying to tweak non free software are working in the dark and will always be surprised. No matter how much they spend, they can never fix the problem.
On my home network, I can do things like block every single incoming port and disable pretty much all of the outgoing ones as well. I can install firewall software on each computer to scan the remaining ones. I can create my own install media to remove nearly any part of windows which isn't related to the bare essentials, then install the bets antispyware software and demand that anybody that uses the computers not click on links in email.
I'm sure there's more, but I would be surprised if I were allowed to do even that much if I were responsible for securing a corporate network.
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Re:Well.... (Score:5, Funny)
excellent botnet-er, would bot again++++!++!
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Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To be honest, I'd even go a step further: I'd make people liable for the actions of their computer, unless they can somehow show that they had taken reasonable steps to prevent desaster from striking.
I don't require people to go through some IT course, but I want them to at lea
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, an internet license is a bunch of computer guys telling the rest of the world that the internet is an infrastructure made for the geeks, by the geeks, and of the geeks. If you really want to join the club you can take a test so we can determine if you're suitable, but otherwise, you're unfit to participate.
Look, you're not going to kill anyone being a bumbling participant on the internet, they way you might in a car or with a gun. Yes, it is possible that you unwittingly might cause some economic impact to someone, but is that a flaw of the user or the system? I submit a banking system that lets an ignorant user leak his personal information which can then be used to ruin their credit is broken. I further submit that a system that lets a zombie computer join thousands of other computers in a criminal enterprise is broken.
The problem doesn't just exist between the keyboard and chair, but also in the policies, protocols, and systems that allow a new or ignorant user to fail so spectacularly.
We should be striving to increase internet penetration to the young, the old, and the impoverished, not locking out those who can't understand our poorly built toys.
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Typical snob response (Score:4, Insightful)
Because someone does not know much about computers, and specifically computer security, does not make them "stupid". It most often means that they have things they they are skilled to deal with. Because you probably cannot perform open heart surgery does not make you stupid either. It means that you probably know about computers and their security. We all have our areas of expertise and interest and they cannot be everything-there is only so much time and mental capacity.
This type of attitude I find prevalent among people who know a bit about computers. This is one of the reasons that Linux has taken so long to be usable for the masses. Most people do not want to build their own computers and most people don't want to have to learn about computer security. They want the people who specialize in it to make it where it works for them.
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Re: (Score:2)
2 tom misle = damn scientologists.
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By participating in a DDoS against me. Can happen easily to you if you're in malware research.
Imagine if you will (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine if you will (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Imagine if you will (Score:5, Funny)
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Software paladins? (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the Storm threat is that it is able to intimidate those who stand up to it, or attempt to combat it. This would suggest that Storm is in turn vulnerable to an attack by an even bigger botnet. It can succeed on poorly protected machines and lurk in the many dark corners of the Internet, like cockroaches. Suppose enough of us willingly subscribed the spare cycles in our machines to serve as a botnet that would fight the others? Could that work?
Can we come up with a working definition of 'good' for such a botnet? I would not subscribe my machine to any government directed search for terrorists, for example (that's probably got me on a no-fly list). However, it should be possible to confine our botnet to the named botnets in the article, and do 'good' in an sense that would be acceptable to most users. If the project veers towards evil, then there must always be a way to unsubscribe.
Then, we want a fancy UI like the SETI screensaver, so we can see how we are doing, and root for our side.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or better yet, if each node ran a small neural net. with each node connected to many other nodes, the whole system might gain consciousness!
Right, because every AI researcher knows "strong AI" is as simple as creating a huge neural network and letting the magic happen ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
spam spam spam spam and more spam (Score:5, Funny)
From the look of things, it appears that their sole purpose is to send me myspace friend requests from lonely, hot girls that have Tom as their only friend, and have selected me as the lucky person who gets to share in viewing their private, personal website, which has many photos of their naked breasts and vagina. Seriously.
Note total absence of word "Microsoft" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting that these articles don't even mention that Microsoft's insistence on running executable content from the browser is at the heart of all these problems.
Re:Note total absence of word "Microsoft" (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you honestly think everyone switching to a different OS would solve the problem?
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You know the answer. (Score:3, Insightful)
We have heard that line saying it's the fault of the novice computer.
I did not believe that 10 years ago. I still don't believe it.
10 years ago, I thought that Microsoft would fix the bugs that created this Anti-Virus business.
I was wrong. Microsoft never saw a business reason to fix those bugs. Instead they increase the "It's not our fault" marketing, and even got into the [Anti]Virus business themselves.
The Windows Virus-prone bugs 10 years ago were:
- Syst
Re:Note total absence of word "Microsoft" (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because it's not the heart of all these problems. The heart of all these problems is that a billion security-unaware people operate computers that are connected to the internet.
No, the heart of the problem is that windows, despite what M$ claims, was not be designed for those people and as a result those people make mistakes.
Software is soft, it can be anything we want it to be, and assholes who claim that "software can't do software related things" are lying through their teeth.
If thirty odd years ago windows had been designed responsibly we wouldn't have the mess that we have now. Amongst many other things when connected to the net they deliberately confused static data with executables and deliberately ran all programs as administrator. Things that mainframe OS' and Unix had understood and solved decades before. I can remember the very first time I saw a web page with an executable and thinking "you stupid fucking idiots". The ramifications were obvious right from the start; M$ just chose to ignore them.
The marketing parasites, and their patsies, who to this day continue to claim that windows was not a large part of the problem are lying arseholes. M$ is slowly improving their security but they still have a long, long way to go with a culture that still tries to test for security rather than building for it. And yes, despite what some idiots claim, security and user friendliness are not mutually contradictory. In fact they are more complimentary than contradictory with well built security systems helping users to make good choices for their own safety as well as everybody else's.
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Flash = blink tag = incompetent web designer.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Note total absence of word "Microsoft" (Score:5, Interesting)
OLPC is potentially quite secure against naive user problems. There are plans for about a billion of these, so you'll have your answer pretty soon.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are millions of Macs out there, and growing. But they're harder to compromise by design. The elusive "Mac virus threat" remains largely a marketing device for Symantec.
Re:Yes, free software would fix the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Linux and MacOS are more secure. It's harder to slip something into the system, at best you can run with user privileges, yes, yes.
Unless you trick the user. And that's pretty much the main infection vector today. About 95% of malware comes in the form of infected spam mails, only 5% of infections rely on system insecurities, buffer overflows or other system related security holes.
And when you can trick the user into executing something, it's trivial to trick him also into giving the malware elevated privileges, provided you promise him something. Send someone a "tool" that promises 20% more speed or ram, but since it has to hook deeply into the system, it will require root privileges.
Yes, you won't fall for it. But the average clueless user? After all, this thingamajig is gonna do something with your system to make it run faster, so it's kinda logic that it will need system privs.
No system is secure from malware. Security is by definition the minimum of a system's security capabilities and its adminstrator's security capability. BOTH need to be secure to create a secure system.
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Re:Yes, free software would fix the problem. (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, we got silly laws here.
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Re:Yes, free software would fix the problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also a bot net of suns is worth far more per machine than windows machines. The numbers I've heard are a sun box on a big connection is worth at least $100 vs about $.1 for a windows box. And there are Solaris 10 botnets out there (thanks telnetd)
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Re:Microsoft isn't the only irresponsible company (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the router was still emailing me every log of all network traffic -- my traffic and the malware traffic also. Seems the malware author does not think my ability to log their traffic was significant.
Netgear was very helpful. Tier1 tech support said securing the router was my responsibility. Asshats!
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Re:Microsoft isn't the only irresponsible company (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Netgear ppl were complete morons and the GUI is not directly linked to the filesystem records/small database/whatever
or
2) Hacker is good enough to alter this part of the router's code as well, meaning he flashed the firmware remotely.
I wonder how many people have been hit with this without knowing. It is one thing to monitor your PC's activity,
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
PS actually your reply is Redundant; but a good reminder for all. Keep up the good work ;)
Re:Note total absence of word "Microsoft" (Score:5, Interesting)
Other stuff, like running an executable sent to you by MSN is so freagin hard it puzzles even me sometimes (I beleive by default you have to change something in the registery, or it simply will flag em and you'll never be able to so much as extract exes from a zip file). Thats probably pushing it too far, but point is, if you don't have the admin password, its relatively difficult to do something retarded aside to hit your own account (which is possible in any OS really, and even then, you get quite a few warnings).
Something of interest, though not really related: Once I installed some game (I forget which) that tried to install a copy protection crap, and Vista actually asked me if I wanted to install it separately from the game itself (I got 2 pop ups). Said no, and it happened that this particular game would run without the copy protection...so I was able to tell it to shoo off (while my friend on XP hosed his install because of it...a patch came out the week later to fix the issue, but I never had the problem in the first place). MS is learning. Slowly.
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security through obscurity (Score:5, Funny)
The lack of mention of business security here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, let me point out for a second how while dangerous for a single home system to be infected, it is a world worse when a business system becomes infected.
Within hours, typically that botnet has replicated to all of the machines on the internal network. Worse, now that botnet has access to your critical database information, consisting of customer records. Often times, the brains behind these botnets can better datamine than your business can, finding interconnections with your customers to better flood them with spam, or worse.
At my job, one of our machines was hit with the Storm. We isolated it within minutes, but even then it still wa a close call. If I hadn't been doing a routine portscan at just the right moment, we'd have never spotted it.
After that, the boss authorized me to begin a slow migration to Linux.
Windows based Super Computers (Score:5, Funny)
Windows is winning (Score:5, Funny)
I like big... (Score:4, Funny)
Age discrimination and I object! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sophistication of this Storm "application" is much more indicative of a mature elder programmer, who probably has read the complete cypherpunks archives. We talked about stuff like this long ago. Compare to things like the Morris worm, the two Manila children, etc. Those were intense, but brief due to coding errors and the like.
Bah. No, these people are not children and they do know what they're doing.
Start planning for Linux and Mac variants (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Relevant? (Score:5, Informative)
That's how it affects you. Well, unless you can be blackmailed along the lines of "pay me X bucks or you go offline for Y days, let's see if your biz survives", it probably won't affect you, directly at least.
How about your employer? What would happen if his internet presence, his mailserver, his means to communicate online were rendered useless for a month? Would the company survive?
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