Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers are finding it practically futile to keep up with evolving botnet attacks. 'We've known about [the threat from] botnets for a few years, but we're only now figuring out how they really work, and I'm afraid we might be two to three years behind in terms of response mechanisms,' said Marcus Sachs, a deputy director in the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International, in Arlington, Va. There is a general feeling of hopelessness as botnet hunters discover that, after years of mitigating command and controls, the effort has largely gone to waste. 'We've managed to hold back the tide, but, for the most part, it's been useless,' said Gadi Evron, a security evangelist at Beyond Security, in Netanya, Israel, and a leader in the botnet-hunting community. 'When we disable a command-and-control server, the botnet is immediately re-created on another host. We're not hurting them anymore.' There is an interesting image gallery of a botnet in action as discovered by security researcher Sunbelt Software."

silly

this whole thing is just ridiculous. yes, sure if you treat existing poorly engineered systems as inviolate and try to work around them its a never ending battle. but the basic tools to provide systemic distributed security have been published for quite some time. fix the problem at its source and stop screwing around.

yes, pkis are not flawless, but it would be a huge step above this kind of flailing

obligatory...

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

When in doubt...

use a big stick. Didn't we learn anything in American History? Roosevelt pwned.

why of course roses are red.

One can always create reverse honey-pot servers that connect to the chat channel and when given a command, reply with "I am sorry Dave, I cannot do that..." and then recite some multi-gigabyte random poem into the channel :)

The key here is "unpatched server" and of course it happens to be a windows box... hmmm...

Re:why of course roses are red.

Oh wait, this is slashdot. Nevermind.

      Correct. The sweetheart in question HERE is probably an overclocked dual core Athlon chip that would handle that poem in a few milliseconds.

Restrictive Firewall Infection

Why hasn't anybody created a "good" trojan that uses as many common exploits as possible to infect these already infected machines with a port-80 restrictive firewall? I think for every somewhat bright for-profit trojan creator, there are thousands of brighter people that can come up with an intelligent plan to do this effectively. Use all spreading techniques that the best of the worst use, but minimize the wasted & bloated traffic, while fixing as many computers as possible. Should be simple!!

Only issue I see is legality. Technically however, I see this as very feasible.

Re:Restrictive Firewall Infection

Sorry, but besides the fact that it's illegal and unethical, it would probably only make things worse anyway.

The Nachi worm [symantec.com] that tried to fix Blaster worm infected PCs back in 2003. Unfortunately, the "cure" was worse than the disease.

We need a really big lawsuit against Microsoft

What's needed is for someone like NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer to charge Microsoft with reckless endangerment for knowingly, willfully, and negligently distributing and continuing to distribute systems vulnerable to such attacks.

Meanwhile, we may need some brutal firewalls:

• All incoming e-mail is reformatted. Attachments are converted to .odf or .png, as appropriate. Stuff that can't be converted is dropped. HTML is parsed, checked for syntax, and Javascript dropped.
• All web browsing to non-secure sites is proxied. Javascript is removed. Flash is removed. Java is removed. All binary data is removed. Images are reformatted to .png format and the HTML adjusted to match. No more "Web 2.0"; those sites just stop working.
• Web browsing to secure sites via SSL is only permitted if the site has a SSL cert that is a high-grade "we really know who this is" cert.
• TCP port 80 is all you get outgoing. Incoming, forget it. UDP, forget it. If you want to message, use the phone.
• You have a machine or two around that are outside the firewall for when you desperately need to do something else. Those machines have a canned read-only disk image that's refreshed on each reboot or logout, like Internet cafe machines.

We're probably going to see some companies going to a locked down firewall like that.

If you're gonna go to all that trouble . . .

Why not just physically unplug your computer from the network?

Re:We need a really big lawsuit against Microsoft

If you your self won't work like that, then don't waste time suggesting it. these measures are really nothing more then window dressing designed to give the apperance of security. I would hazard a guess that more corporate security people are worried about data theft via usb drives, then they are about becoming part of a botnet.

Re:We need a really big lawsuit against Microsoft

Attachments are converted to .odf or .png, as appropriate.

There are many applications which require macros to be present in Word documents. If you translate the macros to ODF's format (does it even support macros?), you've gained nothing. If you don't, you've caused confusion for many customers. And as far as converting images, how do you ensure the buffer overflow (or worse, the WMF arbitrary-code loophole in the specification - this wasn't technically a bug in the parser) isn't present on the firewall itself? I would think a rooted client machine is much better than a rooted firewall.

No more "Web 2.0"; those sites just stop working.

There are quite a few Web 1.5 sites that critically depend on JS, Flash, Java, etc. Facebook loses a lot if you even have just a partial JS interpreter (and I have seen it happen), and Facebook's coding is arguably not 2.0. Yahoo passwords lose a lot of their security if you disable JS, because then you can't do any sort of key challenges - you have to send the password itself, HTTPS or not. Etc.

Web browsing to secure sites via SSL is only permitted if the site has a SSL cert that is a high-grade "we really know who this is" cert.

You have locked out many universities (MIT is a major one; OU and UL also come to mind) that do not feel like paying a 3rd-party commercial company to certify their identity when they can just pass out root certificates.

TCP port 80 is all you get outgoing. Incoming, forget it. UDP, forget it. If you want to message, use the phone.

Wonderful. No e-mail. No file sharing. No VPNs. No intranets. Web-only is fine for home users on AOL. Home users who do anything else, and corporate users, need other ports.

Your internet-café machines are far more usable than your "normal use" machines at this point.

Sue/address the IRC networks, first.

What's needed is for someone like NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer to charge Microsoft with reckless endangerment for knowingly, willfully, and negligently distributing and continuing to distribute systems vulnerable to such attacks.

Sue the IRC networks first; that's what makes it dumb shit easy for these guys to set up their botnets.

I had a machine hacked by a german movie filesharing group, and they incldued a bot which logged into their channel on Rizon. Like a good little admin, I logged into rizon, checked out the channel. It had several thousand users, a whole slew of fserves...and ZERO conversation. None.

I went to #help and reported the botnet attack and the response was: "hey, you want us to shut down one of the most popular channels here because of a evidenceless accusation that you were hacked by them and used as one of their fserves? LOL ZOMG GET SECURITY AHAHAHAHAHA LUSER P0WNZORED" etc. etc.

It is patently obvious that the Rizon admins are FULLY aware that they have dozens, if not hundreds, of illegal filesharing groups that are using botnets to set up fserves, attack other systems for more bots, etc. They're doing jack shit about it (and in fact, they're making it easier- they now support SSL connections) and I think it's time someone sued them to hell and back. It's time IRC operators were taught that you can't knowingly support criminal activity, and that if users report hackings- they need to look into said reports and act on them. I also think it's time IRC traffic was considered "highly suspicous" and monitored by ISPs for fserve commands and such; fserves have no real legitimate purpose today, except illegal filesharing.

PS: Next time you download a movie or program, bittorrent or IRC DCC....realize that it was distributed, most likely, by a group that hacked unix systems. Those systems were owned and administered by people just like you, and that person is going to have to deal with the damage and headaches. Just like you will, some day.

use the clients against themselves

Modern botnets clients are pretty adaptable; they will download patches, modifying themselves to beat disinfectors. With care, and unless the net manager has taken extreme measures to prevent it, one can induce the clients to remove or disable themselves, rather than just trying to kill the control channel. Should that fail, one should be able to determine what fallback channels the botnet clients use and disable those before killing the current command channel.

We need a trusted network of ISPs

What we need is a large number of ISPs to get together and say, "We trust each other to deal with botnets." Then, with a single command, any trusted ISP within the network could instantly send a command to another ISP to shutdown a site or server that is running a botnet. All of these actions would be logged and would be reviewed to make sure that it is only being used against botnets; any sort of abuse (like using it to shut down protest sites or copyright violation sites) would result in an instant revocation of privileges. This system would be much better than what we currently have: trying to call the other ISP, trying to get them to listen to you, trying to get them to trust you ... it can take days, if ever, to shut down a botnet on another network.

Re:We need a trusted network of ISPs

Your post advocates a

(x) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting botnets. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) It will stop botnets for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of windows will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from botherders
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many pc users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the internet
(x) Ease of searching tiny numeric address space of all IP adresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of botnets
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with botherders
( ) Dishonesty on the part of botherders themselves
(x) Scope creep of any powerfull monitoring tool that is introduced to deal with a particular burning issue
(x) The old "Who watches the watchmen" problem
(x) The powerfull temptation to use it as a tool for censorship.

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) Connections should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(x) We should be able to use P2P without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Maybe I'm being complacent, ...

... but I honestly don't see this as such a big issue.

Basically this is a problem with people owning computers who don't know how to maintain them properly, and with MS making it unreasonably difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to maintain a Windows machine properly.

But as someone who doesn't run Windows, I don't really care. I'm sure some of the spam I get is from these bots, but spam would exist with or without botnets, and without a major redesign of the e-mail infrastructure and standards, spam can only be mitigated, not cured. My mitigation measures work for me.

Another theoretical possibility is that I could get extorted by somebody carrying out a DDOS attack. But in reality, that seems more like a worry for a big corporation, not an individual like me.

Another possibility is that somebody I do business with could get their machines owned, and gangsters could steal my identity. Well, it hasn't happened to me yet, and it hasn't happened to anyone I know.

I'm a lot more worried about global warming and nuclear proliferation.

Re:Maybe I'm being complacent, ...

Basically this is a problem with people owning computers who don't know how to maintain them properly

      The cry of "I know, let's invent a computer that is smart enough to maintain itself!" was heard in the boardroom, and thus SkyNet was born - with the dual mission of perfecting itself and eradicating the useless humans that weren't even able to maintain it!

Re:Maybe I'm being complacent, ...

However, maintaining my WinXP machines consists of checking the radio button labelled "Automatic (Recommended)" in the Automatic Updates dialog. It's not difficult, it's not expensive and it's not time-consuming.
A serious question, then: what do you think makes your outcome different from the outcome experienced by the people who are getting their machines owned? I don't know the answer, because I don't run Windows, but I could speculate:

Is it because they intentionally download stuff that infects their machine with spyware? If so, then maybe security is too difficult for them, because they aren't technologically sophisticated enough to realize that this is a bad idea, and maybe MS is helping to make it too difficult for them, by creating a culture where it's normal for every user to run with unlimited privileges.

Another possibility is that they aren't sophisticated to realize that the simple, commonsense measures you've taken (a router/firewall, doing updates) would be more sensible than measures such as buying anti-virus software, or taking their computer to Circuit City to get it fixed when it "gets slow."

I think the real problem is that a lot of people own more computer than they need. All they really need is a word processor, e-mail, and a web browser. They really don't need a general-purpose computer at all, and don't have the skills needed to maintain one. They might be better off with an internet appliance, or a thin client. The problem is that they don't understand how much they don't understand. It's like the people who have to own a Harley Davidson because it's cool, even though it's an utterly impractical motorcycle for what they want to do.

Humans will lose...

Botnet, Skynet, whatever... We effectively lost the war against the robots when we first invented computerization, thus creating the posibility for the future war against the robots.

1001001

SOS

A modest proposal

I am no expert in this area, but a thought occurs.

Why isn't it possible to simply identify the exploit being used to spread a particular botnet, and write software that uses the same exploit to travel throughout the net before activating (perhaps at some specific time) to both wipe out the botnet software and seal off the exploit?

It seems that as soon as you have the original botnet software, re-engineering it for this purpose would be relatively trivial. Plus there would be the immense satisfaction of fighting fire with fire. The software could even remove itself as its final act, saying "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do" (although someone else might have to press the button to lower it into molten metal - "I cannot self-terminate").

The only reason I can think that this wouldn't work is that the 'antidote' software would be breaching computer security all over the place - basically doing the precise thing we are trying to stop. However, surely some sort of 'good samaritan' clause could be worked into the law - or the government could adopt responsibility for this process, or at least for pushing the button that sets each counter-botnet loose in the wild.

Of course this may already be the approach taken - I don't know much about the field, as I say.

Re:A modest proposal

This was done with klez... a good Samaritan wrote a virus that would spread to computers as effectively as klez, look for it, and then eliminate it if found. You know how you knew if you had the Good Samaritan virus? Klez like symptoms. That is a major system slow down, as well as many, many bugs/crashes.

Good times. Viruses like that operate at levels that were only really meant for system tasks, and yet they are were never part of that system. Windows being the careful balancing act that it already is will topple over readily when you add anything to the base.

All over the place

Of course this stuff is all over. My sister's PC was infested with malware and a member of a botnet. She has a teenage daughter that clcks on everything sent her way. I discovered, before a complete system wipe, two processes that run on start up using telnet, at least three many pop-up services, two browser tool-bars, a page hijack stacked upon another page hijack that got had it's registry keys still intact, but was disabled by the other hijack, and the system had Python installed and was compiling source code! After all that, they better change their browser habits. I only hope my sister dosen't make her daughter stop using the PC or the web altogether. That's the wrong answer, and hopefully I can educate them and give them an alternative.

Net Force

So, err, do we need some kind of international police force to keep the Internet clear of botnets? Should the UN run it? Do they get cool blue suits and have their own swat teams around the world?

Come on folks, "lost"??!

The so-called botnet battle is no different than the war on spam or the anti-virus front, or any of the others.

It's not a failure of technology. It's BAD PEOPLE, exploiting BAD SOFTWARE, who aren't being dealt with because of BAD EXECUTION of BAD LAWS. Fix the software, the law, and the enforcement of the law (esp. jurisdiction), and you'll neutralise 95+% of the bad people.

This crap is criminal. Crimes like this are sheltered by discussions about philosophy, politics, jurisdiction, and technology. If people would stop discussing and arguing, and start working together on the problem, it could be eliminated in under 24 months.

But convincing people to work together is impossible, so we might as well get used to it.

It's simple. They don't care.

The simple problem with the fight against botnets is that it's asymmetric, and not in our favor. The bots are in a place that is particularly difficult for someone attempting to dismantle the network to reach, the property of someone else. It's not the technical problems that make a botnet so difficult to dismantle, but the legal ones.

The botnet creators don't give a damn, their objective involves breaking the law (where there is one) in order to hijack someones computer. Someone attempting to destroy the botnet is likely to be atempting to operate within the law, which requires notifying and enlisting the support of the owners of the compromise machines, many of which:

a) are difficult or impossible to contact
b) don't speak your language
c) don't understand anything about the problem
d) don't care

Any single instance of a botnet may have weaknesses that permit its demise without running into potential legal problems (such as a poorly-secured disable command), however botnets as a concept have no real theoretical weakness given the appropriate cryptography and care of construction. Decentralised, failure resistant networks of cooperating nodes is a well researched area and at the level botnets operate, barely constitute a challenge to anyone with the necessary knowledge of protocols, cryptography and programming.

They're here to stay, there is no practical non-desperate legal changes or technical tricks which will kill the concept entirely. Even if the general level of internet security increased 10-fold, there'd still be more than enough vulnerable computers to support botnet operators, and lets face it, that level of security change is not going to happen. Even if the general OS level improves, old and embedded (non-patchable) devices are still plentiful, and there will be more no-patch applicance like systems in the future which will continue to be exploited.

As a systems administrator or someone otherwise concerned with the impact, the rules are simple. Stay patched, Stay vigilant. If a large botnet decides to get you, hope your ISP subscribes to something like tipping-point that will give them a head start on deflecting the inbound traffic. That's about it.

Re:It's simple. They don't care.

``d) don't care''

And that is a matter of economics; specifically, externalities. You would bear the cost of securing your system, but you aren't seeing the cost of running an insecure one.

In the Netherlands, at least one large network employs a detection mechanism for exploited hosts using honeypots. A lot of the IPs on the network get assigned to honeypots, so that a compromised host is likely to hit a honeypot sooner or later. The compromised host is that put in quarantine, denying it normal Internet access (only access to information and removal tools is still available). This hurts users when their machines are compromised, encouraging them to secure their systems.

It surprises me that this isn't done more often. Surely ISPs have something to gain from eliminating all the traffic that compromised hosts generate (seeing that 90% of email traffic is spam, and the bulk of it comes from compromised machines, just to name one thing).

Re:It's simple. They don't care.

This hurts users when their machines are compromised, encouraging them to secure their systems.

Or to change ISPs. Or to call the support number, resulting in increased costs for the ISP. It still seems to be in the ISP's rational economic self-interest to ignore bots on their own network.

Skynet is taking everything over!

Run for your lives! Oh... wait.

Automated response

This has been discussed on Slashdot before, but it seems relevant here. If it proves impossible to stop self-replicating worms by patching holes, you can either have mandatory auto-updates provided by a "trusted" source (your friendly OS provider), or launch active defenses: white-hat worms whose payload is the patch itself. Or an anti-botnet which DOS'es infected hosts (similar to what BlueFrog tried to do for spam). Of course these cause problems and can be gamed (someone spoofs an attack as coming from you, bringing the anti-botnet to bear against you, etc.)

The basic problem is: manual patching is never going to keep up with automated discovery of vulnerable machines. You either need an automated fixing process (immune system), or you need to clamp down heavily on allowed interaction (boy-in-a-bubble style).

larger battle

This isn't a battle for/against botnets. They're just the symptoms. What this really means is that the battle to have secure home PCs is lost. I won't even get into the Windos vs. Real OS discussion. The point is deeper still: Our homes are safe from burglars because those with the great skills and expert tools don't break into homes, they break into banks.
Not so on the Internet. Due to automation you can play the numbers game, and taking over 100,000 machines is feasable, less risky yet possibly just as profitable as breaking into one bank.

The best non-computer equivalent I can think of is the plague. Welcome to the crowded cities of the middle ages. Even if you, personally, are safe, you're still affected. Think about it.

My comments..

A long time ago, I used to run botnets and that other bullshit...So take it as I know what I am talking about.

It is a pity that the general open channels are a thing of the past, but so are private BBS'.

This is not true at all. There are plenty of -sp channels on IRC. Hell, just do a /list on EFnet...thousands upon thousands. And usually, when just going around IRC, you arent just going to walk up upon a botnet..

With care, and unless the net manager has taken extreme measures to prevent it, one can induce the clients to remove or disable themselves, rather than just trying to kill the control channel.

No shit. Simply decompile the exec, get the password (shouldent be hard, unless it is encrypted, usually isnt), get the server ip/port/password/channel and possibly channel key, join the channel, login to the bots (.l password or what ever) and do .rm and boom, they lost their entire net (thats assuming they have it set so *!*@* can login).

Basically this is a problem with people owning computers who don't know how to maintain them properly, and with MS making it unreasonably difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to maintain a Windows machine properly.

Now now. I am a Linux fan and such, but blaming Microsoft here is just stupid! You know why? Because usaully the thing is exploited hasent been patched yet. Every program has bugs, thats just how it is. Get over it. And how is it expensive to maintain windows machines properly? Windows Update is free, no?

But as someone who doesn't run Windows, I don't really care.

While *nix botnets arent nearly as prevalent as Windows botnets, there are still ones out there...Dont think you are exempt.

nother possibility is that somebody I do business with could get their machines owned, and gangsters could steal my identity.

Its very easy to get your identity stolen these days..Simply do some SQL injection on a pron site or what ever, then boom, you got yourself 5k credit cards.

Why can't we all just hit "delete"? takes only a few seconds.

Were you dropped a child? On Windows, you cant delete a exec if its running..and most botnet execs fuck up things like the task manager and have backups of themselfs on your box.

Why isn't it possible to simply identify the exploit being used to spread a particular botnet, and write software that uses the same exploit to travel throughout the net before activating (perhaps at some specific time) to both wipe out the botnet software and seal off the exploit?

Easier said than done. How does your 'software' know what on the machine is a trojan? That wouldent be very good would it if your 'software' illegally compromised hosts trying to get rid of the trojans and accidently got some guys stuff that isnt infected? Also consider, when ever a new exploit is leaked in to the wild, all of the current botnet trojans are updated with it...There are widely diffrent...there is no plasuable way to just rid of all hosts comprimised with hole ____

Obligatory: Yes, but does it run linux?

Seriously. Does this beowulf botnet run linux? Are linux hosts being deprived of the global machine endeavor to sell us more v1agra and inform us of opportunities to participate in online gaming? Can we not assist in the provision of "bulletproof hosting"? Does *BSD not deserve to take it's place in the pantheon of truly "highly available, totally reliable, even if netops doesn't want to run them" services? I say if an open source OS can't support these services, what good is it? This is the future of clustering I tell you!

TFA says only this:

• Botnets filled--and easily replenished--with compromised Windows have emerged as the key hub for well-organized crime rings around the globe, using stolen bandwidth from drone zombies to make money from nefarious Internet activity, according to security experts tracking the threat.
• Statistics from multiple sources justify Evron's pessimism. According to data culled from Microsoft's MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool), back-door Trojans and bots represent a "significant and tangible threat to Windows users."
• Since the first iteration of the MSRT in January 2005, the tool has removed at least one Trojan from about 3.5 million unique computers. Of the 5.7 million infected Windows machines, about 62 percent was found with a Trojan or bot.

Surely something can be done to get our linux and BSD boxen involved in this noble global effort! Sure, with their limited user base all ten of the OSS servers on these internets would hardly make a splash in the ocean of Windows boxes, but every little bit helps. Something must be done. Somebody start a project or six on Sourceforge and do something about this.

RBL

In the end, this problem is only going to get mitigated if we take it as seriously as we did the spam problem. For a long time, ISPs would allow spammers onto their servers because there was no incentive to kick them off. RBLs changed all that.

ISPs that tolerate insecure computers need to get blocked. Blocked from everything. It COULD happen, if Comcast and AT&T both decide they've had enough.

This would have the added benefit of stopping a lot of spam.

Yes, RBLs didn't get rid of spam. But they sure did (do) help. And a good part of the reason they don't work better is botnets. (remember Blue Security [securityfocus.com]?

-Daniel

Until people are punished for their system's behav

Unitl people are punished for their system's behavior, nothing is ever going to happen. Yeah it's annoying for most people to get rooted, but other than that, why should they care? Now if you were legally liable for the damages your system did, regardless of whether or not it was rooted, we'd see a major change in botnets, and a LOT less people with rooted machines.

People only react to that which causes them difficulty, punish them for not taking care of their responsibilities and things will get better. But until then, it will only get worse.

You're part of a botnet? Pay a fine! Didn't know? Too bad. Just like your dog getting out and destroying property, if you don't care enough to protect others from your wanton disregard, it's going to cost you.

The Good Old Days...

when high technology was its own idiot filter are long gone.

It is illegal to drive a car on any public road without a drivers licence, for the safety of other road users. Why shouldn't it be illegal to connect a computer to the internet without the proper qualifications, again for the common good? Keep all the stupid off the internet and the situation is bound to improve because there will be less opportunity for the greedy to exploit them.

There's a simpler way

If companies know the means of advertising (i.e. malware) are illegal, why aren't we going after the companies that use such methods? Admittedly, some viagra knock off company in Mexico is difficult to go after, but wouldn't it be easier to get rid of these intrusive networks by cutting off any reason for them to exist?

The Next Step

Publicly executing a few dozen botherders would be a good next step.

Code?

I'm sorry, but when i saw the following in the little slide show [eweek.com] linked to in the summary:

This is an example of the welcome message from a live botnet IRC session. This is what a victim machine would see -- lots of cryptic data (potentially code), an IRC connect message

i'm seriously starting to doubt the guy that set up the slide show. Maybe it's cryptic to him, but to anyone that has actually taken a look at how irc works it's plainly obvious that these are simply the server reporting what it can and cannot support in terms of modes for channels and nicks.

The smart thing to do...

The most effective way I have found in fighting the botnet pandemic is quite simply educating people about the threat, and convincing them not to download stupid shit.

Arikle is Botnet FUD

The battle is not lost. Some online casinos fought and won the battle.
Read here here [csoonline.com].

Those picutre comments are ignorant.

Picture 2 and 3 are really just normal IRC connect picutures and an abandoned channel with X still in it. Any body who knows a bit about IRC knows that X is NOT a "cryptic controller" but just a function of the IRC network that protects a channel from rogue takeovers. Picture 7 ain't really thousands upon thousands of bots, just the "eavesdropper" and two regular operators. And it is the eavesdropper that is isuing the commands?

Please o please, let me have some security proffesionals who knows what they are talking about.

How far do we want to go?

``Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?''

No. There are measures that will completely eliminate botnets. The question is: how far do we want to go? There comes a point at which the cost of botnets is less than the cost of the countermeasures. For many amateur admins, that point is right now; they don't notice if their machines are compromised, so they don't have much of an incentive to secure them properly. That's why we're losing the war.

The exhibited botnet is likely serbian

The screenshots in the article slideshow indicate that the particular live botnet operation they used as illustration is most likely serbian.

The word "KPAJNHA" occurring in a IRC server name is actually the serbian word "KRAJINA" writen in cyrillic, using latin alphabet characters to represent similar cyrillic characters (P for R, N for I, H for N). "krajina" translates roughly to "shire" or "county" in serbian and "Krajina" with capital K was also the name of the ill-fated rogue serbian republic that existed on croatian soil between 1991-1995. In another screenshot we see an IRC channel named "armija" which is serbian for "army" -- I can imagine an operator would name his swarm of bots an "army".

let it get worse

I appreciate the work these people are doing in trying to stop the botnets, but in order to fix something in many cases there needs to be a disaster. I say let the botnets do their thing. When 100,000 people get together for a class action lawsuit to sue an OS or application vendor for poor security that allowed their computer to get zombified and participate in illegal activity the world will wake up.

Why? Because there's NO PENALTY!

Trying to stop botnets by taking-down servers is like trying to stop rock-throwing by confiscating rocks.

An exercise in futility.

You stop rock-throwing by going after the throwers. If these propeller-heads would stop playing with their toys long enough to spend fifteen minutes talking to the nearest cop they would realize this.

Ignore the silly botnets and invest the resources to find and punish their creators. Criminal behavior declines only when there is substantial risk of substantial punishment. Until that risk exists, you're just wasting everyone's time.

'Nuff said.

read-only OS

I think the general solution is to not have people with full-function read-write OS and filesystems. 99% of people don't need a full blown "computer". They surf the web and do email and that's it. What they need is something like an X-terminal where there is a browser and email software in firmware, and that's it. Updates could be done but everything would be signed digitally and come from a secure location, or done manually, and never without operator approval.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Nice to see that Eweek and Slashdot editors failed to note Gadi's hobby as NANOG troll. His chicken little ravings about botnets aren't taken seriously there, nor should they here.

How do you Know and REMOVE them?

I have a lovely wife who surfs the internet constantly. She has a bot on her Windows Box. I noticed it when we sent out 86 thousand emails in one day. (it helps to monitor your port 25!!). Okay.. so she is compromised.

Norton, Spybot, etc CANNOT detect what she has. Netstat shows the connection but taskmanager etc does not. I block port 25 from her computer as a precaution and the darn computer starts searching for smtp servers on the local network. I use qmail-auth and it prevents it.. however I have no trust that it cant use UPnP or something else to change my main router.

So.. HOW IN THE HECK do you REMOVE stuff that you cant find? I really.. REALLY.. dont want to reformat and reinstall because there is no way this should be hidden to adminstrator on Windows XP.. but it IS!

Economic Perspective

Are security costs an external cost related to running Windows?

If security costs had to be borne by Windows users, would we live in a different computing world?

Hold users accountable for the damaged caused by botnets. If I leave dangerous crap on my lawn, it's my fault. If I leave a gun on my porch, and someone uses it to rob a bank, I'm accountable. If my company runs an open SMTP relay, and people get spammed, it's my fault.

Why should an insecure computer be any different?

It's not like you don't have a choice. De facto, purchasing a Mac or Linux computer renders you 100% invulnerable to this kind of crap, with only theoretical vulnerabilities out there.

Use a Windows computer, don't secure it? Pay the price. If you don't want to risk your system becoming a bot, run something that doesn't get rooted.

The real problem is ...

that most people don't care a shit. And people who do care either have to learn to live with banging their heads into major walls, or just give up. Most things that sound sensible, for example disconnect infected computers when reported and only reconnected them when they are guaranteed clean, and have the owner pay a reconnection fee, are not going to work for several reasons like customers move to the next ISP which doesn't care, or the overhead of such measurements. And so we will live in the Wild, Wild, West of the Internet for probably 10-20 years more, letting the criminals get (even more) firm roots.

Back up a bit, look at the last picture

The combover [eweek.com] is ALIVE i tell you, ALIVE! Hooray for Patrick Jordan!

Research being done on botnets

Hey, I attended a computer engineering graduate seminar at my school (University of Central Florida) last week, and the topic was about Modeling and Measuring botnets. Dr. Cliff C. Zou had some novel ideas and has recieved a grant from the NSF to further his research. His published works can be found by searching google scholar (I just checked).

What?

"...but we're only now figuring out how they really work"

it's not like it's an alien virus.
Jeez, they're created by people, I suspect that they know how they work.

Windows Messenger Service

Remember those Windows Messenger Service spam messages that became popular with Windows XP? When you get attacked by a botnet, try to send a WMS message to each of the attacking IPs. e.g. "You are infected with botnet software. Please remove it." I know that most XP machines have the WMS service turned off by now, but the cost to trying to send a message is negligable and I'd be willing to bet that there is considerable overlap between unpatched XP systems and systems with WMS on.

Re:Problem Solved

I don't think that bots are invited. This wouldn't make sense from an administrative view. The channels are probably password-protected. Nothing a little sniffing can't fix.

After all, the bot is code running locally. So if it contains any channel names, channel keys or cryptographic keys, you can get to them.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

check if there is a "start" icon in your left lower corner of the screen. if so - yes, chances are you have caught a virus, and your computer is taken over and controled by the dark forces.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

You have no idea how depressing it is that I can't decide if the above comment should be modded flamebait, funny, informative or insightful.

I have already said it

Slashdot needs a mod option: +1, Whatever.

Re:I have already said it

It already does. It's called Underrated. Still waiting for -1 Wrong, personally (not that it applies here).

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

Firewalls are useful for monitoring traffic. The best way to detect a zombie computer is to look at the traffic coming in and out, checking for anomalies (such as excessive traffic to places nobody would be going to). Security Now [grc.com] is a great podcast that deals with security issues and locking down your systems. Episodes 3, 8, and 4 are particularly relevant. It can get technical at times but all-in-all it's a great explanation of how things work and what can be done to secure them.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

Useful in theory but how much time does it actually take to monitor this. There is generally so much ARP and other traffic going on that I've found it's extremely difficult in practice to actually discover such a trend. iptraf and some other tools ease the burden by allowing device and port specific analysis but still you really have to pay attention on a real-time basis or do a lot of data-mining. Who's going to spend this time on home network much less a general business environment where system administrators are already overstreached and security administrators are still the CFO's favorite line item veto?

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

Set up a bridge without an IP address and install Snort on it. On FreeBSD or OpenBSD, this procedure is a snap. Your mileage may vary, query Google for assistance.
Snort identifies traffic by signatures, so instead of you eyeballing suspicious patterns, it can tell you if certain phrases are used, certain protocols, or what-have-you. Writing your own signatures are a piece of cake and the process is well-documented.
The bridge sits at the mouth of your network (behind your firewall) and can be used to identify what is getting past the firewall.
For the crafty -- use Snort2pf to automatically block inappropriate traffic. I used this to discourage eDonkey usage on school system's computer network and it worked like a dream.

Know your network.

There is generally so much ARP and other traffic going on that I've found it's extremely difficult in practice to actually discover such a trend.

ARP should not matter on the firewall.

Anyway, the easiest way is to monitor traffic by IP address, at the firewall, during times when no one should be using the computer with that address. If the machine is doing anything that goes through the firewall at 1 am, you should investigate.

Who's going to spend this time on home network much less a general business environment where system administrators are already overstreached and security administrators are still the CFO's favorite line item veto?

On a home network? Probably no one.

On a business's network, that's completely different. If you leave your network open and are cracked and you lose you credit card numbers, that's between you and the bank. If a business leaves its network open and is cracked and loses YOUR credit card number, they can be sued.

The problem is that not many "network administrators" really know anything about their network or security. There are an almost infinite number of things you can that will take time and money but that will not actually increase the security of your systems.

Education is the beginning.

The Route Of Existence

If you can check it, therein lies the problem. The paradox is in its mere existence, it thinks, therefore it already has. ___________________________________ LunarLodge: "The Last Best Space"®

Re:Problem Solved

The botnets aren't using public IRC servers, they're using servers specifically set up to control botnets.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

If you do not know how to check, I can assure you that your network is fully owned.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

Given where you work, I would suggest security is a state of mind. Do not trust what people put forth as "secure". However it is almost certainly not your problem. If it is your problem, then no matter how small or large your instalation is, I have this to say:
Hire contarctors to evuate your installation. They need not have real access, in fact they should be able to propose possible vulnerabilities without real access, assuming they can ask questions. So you hire them to ask questions, you take note of the questions they ask. Maybe you hire one or two and maybe you hire none. You have just paid people to ask questions about your system. If it were me, in your shoes, and assuming you have power, I would call back the ones that asked really good questions, and explain to them you want more. And then pay those guys.
And then fix your shit. You will end up with some pretty good analysis (first level only) and its on you to decide who you want to invite back. It is OK to initially invite local contractors, but only give out information if they give you a "good vibe".

So back to your original statement "I work at a hospital. Sometimes I wonder whether our computers really are as secure as they should". If you have to ask, then you do not have a qualified team to deal with this. Your second thing is more pointed: "All the computers have AVG installed, but is there something else I can do to check?". I am sorry, if you are really in charge you need to hire someone who can deal with this ASAP. It will take too much time for you to come up to speed. I have many times heard the arguement "but we are small" however you gave the word 'hospital'. Secure your data. If you have lack of funding then get the funding. It seems I cannot stress this enough. You expect the doctors to "do it right", your patients expect your entire facility to "do it right".
On a last note: Bringing someone in who knows more than you does not threaten your position, it only means your a decent manager.
Also, not to be critical, but you mention "AVG" in the hospital [record?] context. I will not say you have no clue, however you have no idea what your dealing with. The world is far more sinister than you know. AVG is a method of turning a 'blind eye'.
If you truelly are involved with IT at a hospital, I would be willing to hook you up with a clinic that has won multiple state and national awards for its handling of IT. They would be willing to help for free, its the way they roll. They do it up right. However, I would have to make sure your for real before I bother them, with you.
I am not sure how we would do that, here on slashdot. Tell you what, you give me an inclination via response and I will figure the mechanics out.
No hospital (or clinic, or eye doctor) should be without real protection.

--dant

Know if you've been rooted

What does it matter, really, if you've been rooted?

The sad fact is that no matter how often you're rooted, as the other post quite clearly pointed out, you're never going to get approval to remove the defective software that allowed it. If knowing creates willful negligence but not knowing doesn't, there's a certain advantage in not looking.

Just watch your netops keep uninstalling the more obvious malware and reimaging your boxes every few years and pretending everything is ok. Nod when they call the AV and the firewall edge box due diligence and don't watch those road warriors connect their notebooks to your localnet. You never get documents with executable content in email from outside your network anyway and if you did the virus scanner would stop it before delivery, wouldn't it?. Nobody on your network would click a suspicious link. These are not the rootkits you're looking for. Repeat after me: "I am so shocked! Gosh those hackers are clever. I hope they go to prison for a long time if they're ever caught using their completely anonymous fault tolerant botnet."

Now go heal some sick people, and never get admitted to your hospital under your own name.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

I work at a hospital. Sometimes I wonder whether our computers really are as secure as they should. All the computers have AVG installed, but is there something else I can do to check?

Set a network switch or hub right behind your keyboard so you can see the status lights. If it seems a little busy when you are not doing anything, somebody may be using your computer remotely. I think more computers need the NIC status lights on the front of the monitor, not the back of the PC.

Re:How do you know if you've been rooted?

If you're running windows, you don't get rooted. Instead you get administered.