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25 Percent of All Computers in a Botnet?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 26, 2007 05:38 PM
from the you-might-be-one-of-them dept.
from the you-might-be-one-of-them dept.
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?
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[+]
Meet the Botnet Hunters 194 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is running a pretty decent story about 'Shadowserver,' one of a growing number of volunteer groups dedicated to infiltrating and disabling botnets. The story covers not only how these guys do their work but the pitfalls of bothunting as well. From the article: 'Even after the Shadowserver crew has convinced an ISP to shut down a botmaster's command-and-control channel, most of the bots will remain infected. Like lost sheep without a shepherd, the drones will continually try to reconnect to the hacker's control server, unaware that it no longer exists. In some cases, Albright said, a botmaster who has been cut off from his command-and-control center will simply wait a few days or weeks, then re-register the domain and reclaim stranded bots.'"
[+]
Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost? 374 comments
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."
[+]
Aggressive Botnet Activities Behind Spam Increase 194 comments
An anonymous reader writes, "A spam-sending Trojan dubbed 'SpamThru' is responsible for a vast amount of the recent botnet activity which has significantly increased spam levels to almost three out of every four emails. The developers of SpamThru employed numerous tactics to thwart detection and enhance outreach, such as releasing new strains of the Trojan at regular intervals in order to confuse traditional anti-virus signatures detection." According to MessageLabs (PDF), another contributor to the recent spam increase is a trojan dropper called "Warezov."
[+]
Deconstructing a Pump-and-Dump Spam Botnet 382 comments
Behind the Front writes "eWeek has teamed up with Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks in Atlanta, to show the inner working of a massive botnet that is responsible for the recent surge of 'pump and dump' spam. It's a detailed picture of how these sleazy operations work and why they're so hard to shut down. Sobering numbers: 70,000 infected machines capable of pumping out a billion messages a day, virtually all of them for penis enlargement and stock scams. Excellent graphics, too, including one chart that shows that Windows XP Service Pack 2 is hosting nearly half the attacked machines."
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25 Percent of All Computers in a Botnet?
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Botnets (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Botnets (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
(http://obsessivemathsfreak.org/ | Last Journal: Friday June 09 2006, @08:15PM)
Re:Botnets (Score:4, Funny)
(http://home.primus.ca/~ronsharp/tororg.html)
Cybermen: Delete! Delete!
Botnet Bots: V1agr4! V1agr4!
Request (Score:2)
Re:Request (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Request (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.on.net/)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.cnycomputerservice.com/)
The major ISPs will do it, but only if it's already costing them $$ in bandwidth.
Re:Request (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.on.net/)
Re:Request (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 19 2006, @03:25AM)
Re:Request (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.imwithfred.com/)
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.
Use the poison as the cure. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.geocities.com/purpledinoz/)
Ramen worm (Score:4, Informative)
25%? BS.... (Score:5, Funny)
And so it begins (Score:2)
Law enforcement? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City)
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.
To solve a problem, you have to go to the source (Score:1)
Me scared (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.hipersonik.com/)
(Another statistics victim)
If you include routers, switches, fridges, printer (Score:1)
(http://www.users.qwest.net/~waffleck-asch/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @04:46PM)
More likely is a statistic that said more than 25 percent of all IP addresses have at least one CPU behind them which is part of a botnet.
That might be true.
Bogus Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.securityzone.org/)
- 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:Bogus Numbers (Score:4, Funny)
They have antivirus software. It came with the computer when they bought it four years ago.
Imagine that (Score:1)
South Korea? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.lazylightning.org/)
I keep banning new IP ranges originating from
Accountability (Score:2, Interesting)
If I leave my car unattended with all doors opened, engine running in front of a bank. If this bank gets robbed, and my car is used by the robber as a getaway car, I'm accountable in front of a judge
Why not the same with computers left unprotected and unattended ?
Cybercrime (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday March 01 2007, @01:53PM)
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! (Score:4, Funny)
Class action (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
(http://tonyc.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 17 2004, @12:12PM)
Evidence? (Score:2)
Yes it is possible to eliminate (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
imho 50% more likely (Score:1, Troll)
The ISPs could help stop this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I wonder how they got that 150M number? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.pebkac.us/)
This will change with Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.xeomage.com/)
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'.
Riddle me this, botnet... (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 21 2002, @04:37PM)
What is the best way to go about? monitor ports? is there a piece of software that can detect it for me? Perfeable something I can run anytime, but not have it loaded when I am not running it. I.E. not like antivirus software.
Ideally something whose utput isn't intemidating to a user that may need to read the resule back to me. I'm thinking family computers here.
straw poll..... (Score:2)
Yeah, that's what I thought. Hell, half of my co-workers are linux fanboys who run mail servers on their broadband connections, say things like "I don't trust anyone to route my mail for me, not even my ISP" while complaining about spam and botnets.
1 in 4? (Score:3, Funny)
Is my computer part of a Bot Net? (Score:1)
This is a feature of WINDOWS - fix summary (Score:2)
(http://www.telegraphics.com.au/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 06, @03:35PM)
BIG Orgs & BIG $s (Score:2)
Big $s means there will be a lot of "retirement" suggestions being quietly made over coffee prior to the ICANN meetings designed to keep the status quo.
I, for one... (Score:1)
(http://www.sengaya.de/)
will anti-virus software prevent this? (Score:2)
(http://www.yellowcatdesign.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 23 2003, @01:55AM)
Am I still in obvious danger of being infected by bots? How would I find out if any of my machines is infected? All the precautions I take seemed reasonable enough a few years back. How do I continue safe internetting?
Any practical advise would be welcome.
How many are Macs? (Score:2)
Can anyone cite successful attacks on Macs turning them into Bots? (I'd feel much more comfortable defending my own machines if I knew of what has happened to others...)
dave
Me not (Score:2)
You Are Required by Law (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Easy, just follow other examples (Score:1)
(http://edebris.com/)
Stop drugs by jailing users
Stop botnets by jailing bot owners
If the stigma associated with having a botfly crawl out of ones skull would attach to botnet infected computers, the problem would go away in a matter of hours.
Not a law enforcement problem... (Score:2)
They may pay my check, but do I care? (Score:1)
Can we please be specific when reporting this? (Score:2)
(http://www.aquadan.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 15 2006, @09:21PM)
This in no way applies to any Mac, Linux, Unix, or other machines. Botnets are, at this point, unique to windows! Make sure everyone knows it!
Eventually legal action will have to be taken (Score:1)
When Gates/Ballmer find their customers getting fined or worse (better) then we'll start to see results.
25% is not enough (Score:1)
Distributed Computing Bot (Score:1)
(http://www.uaf.edu/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 28 2005, @03:45AM)
How long till someone uses this troubling activity for good? How long till we see a SETI.bot or FOLDING.bot virus out there that invades your computer, and works in your free time to search for aliens or cure disease.
Distributed_Computing.bot AKA "Distributed Computing for Dummies (the REALLY easy install)"
I don't have anything to worry about (Score:2)
I use ALTIMIT OS. [wikipedia.org] Yeah, I know the market share is small, but we'll never get pwn3d. Windows is so full of holes they ought to outlaw it.
What about a broadband users license? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.bdwoolman.net/)
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?
Well, that proves one thing (Score:2)
(http://www.valerieandevi.be/)
I know this will get modded flame by some fanboy, but it's funny, laugh.
I think this one might be Microsofts fault (Score:2)
I wonder how many of those bots are Microsoft Operating Systems...
I'm just asking...
Someone needs to create an Anti-Bot-Net Bot-Net (Score:1)
So what is really the purpose? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
So? (Score:1)
moving up the parasitic chain (Score:1)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:1)
Re:Just install linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2, Insightful)
If you mean permanently bot-free, then it's going to be an empty internet because every OS has security issues.
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:4, Insightful)
In the meantime, I'll keep Clam AV going, backup regularly, and keep my admin account separate from the others.
Diversify Now. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
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:How to stop the bots (Score:1)
(Murphy's law says programs will have bugs. So assume they will.)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
"Made bot-free"? Reinstalling Windows makes it bot-free.
No, there has to be a NIST standard test for determining how many bots infect an operating system in 2 hours of "typical" surfing. (Determining what "typical" is, and preventing MSFT from corrupting the test are the hard parts.)
Then, pass a law saying that network-providers can not let those OSs connect to their networks.
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.theinternetisboring.net/)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday February 13 2007, @05:31PM)
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.
Re:Just install linux (Score:1)
Re:Just install linux (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://freefall.homeip.net/)
On linux, you only need a script that does the equivalent of this: Or, if you have netcat available to you and prefer to use that tool: Or just include all the tcpip stuff in the trojan the idiot linux luser runs. It's easy enough to add it to their
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:Doesn't care or doesn't know? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Just install linux (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 13, @11:39AM)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
Re:Would killing individual bots be unethical? (Score:2)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
(http://zeff.us/)
Re:Would killing individual bots be unethical? (Score:2)
Ethical - yes.
Legal - no.
Fun - oh hell yeah.
EVEN MORE SCARY it's 1 in 2 windows computers. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 07, @01:18PM)
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. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.hyperborea.org/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @05:30PM)
Judging by some blogs I've seen, I suspect you're right.
woof (Score:5, Funny)
Teenage Drivers (Score:3, Interesting)
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 there are more windows machines out there so naturally they have more instances of botnets. The second thing is that windows Bot's hurt other windows users more than they hurt the rest of us. So they cant be penalized for that either.
What I am saying is that
1) per captita windows machines have more bots than other systems
2) that bots don't just hurt windows user but do affect others.
Re:Not a question of ethics (Score:2)
Re:Not a question of ethics (Score:2)
Re:Where there's a will, there's a way (Score:2)
(http://phroggy.com/)
Re:Just install linux (Score:3, Informative)
Oh... this is not my day, even slashdot's captcha offers me "punisher"
Bad statistics (Score:2)
To draw the conclusion that Windows is bot friendly and Linux is bot-hostile is bad stats because there are other factors that come into the equation.
To set up and run Linux requires a degree of net-savvyness beyond wahat default WIndows requires. Thus installations running Linux are likely to be run by better informed people who are bot-aware and take precautions. I run Linux at home and am pretty sure I don't have any bots. I also power down everything when not in use too. However, at work we run Windows hosts. The IT guys have very tight security and I would expect that they have zero bots either.
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
(http://ryanrusson.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:06PM)
Couldn't agree more. I'm a reluctant Windows user (Locked in to their servers, dev tools, and other technology long, long ago. It's too late for me... Save yourself.) and the latest M$ scheme really leaves me speechless. Now with "OneCare" they are selling you security-related services for their OSes! Shhhheeeee-it. P.T. Barnum must be rolling in his grave, wishing he'd thought this up. That's like selling me a car, then telling me it's defective and for another $1,000 you'll fix a problem that may cause it to explode while driving.
Re:Just install linux (Score:2)
This can be quite difficult and can limit your friend's choice. Unfortunately in the majority of cases you will have to install the Linux OS for them or better still get them to do the install with you advising them and jotting down notes for them, When you are finished the basic install you should get them to do it again which is great for a simple disaster recovery exercise and gives your friend a good deal of confidence. It is even more fun if you can get a group of friends to do this.
In principle putting Linux on a PC is an excellent way of reducing malware on the Internet however it must be remembered that the people who get problems are normally computer illiterate and treat a computer like a commodity item that to them is an interactive TV. You don't have to be a Unix/Linux guru to install and maintain Linux software but you do have to be prepared to learn and one of the major learning areas is security and basic system administration. Unix/Linux does force you to do some learning and this is its major strength and its weakness. It is possible to get worms and other malware on *nix machines but being aware of this and how to combat them reduces the risk. Again a little knowledge and a willingness to learn goes a long way. I have personally found that most people can easily learn to work under Linux however you do need to be able to motivate them.
To gently force people to learn how to work under Linux, you need to only install Linux on the PC and this means no dual booting because I can guarantee that the user of the machine will backslide to a Microsoft OS. What about "games" I hear you say well there is Wine and other emulation software as well as consoles (sorry could not resist) that can help but the reality is you won't be able to run the latest Microsoft OS compatible games. Of course if Game Manufactures (they go were the money is and at the moment it is Microsoft) become aware of more and more Linux users then you will see games that will run natively under Linux. It is happening but slowly.
Microsoft may have popularised the Internet but they glossed over the fact that you as the user need to do some learning and this is the major reason why we have malware on the Internet.
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:1)
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:2)
(http://www.jaspergoes.nl/ | Last Journal: Monday July 02, @12:06AM)
It's not a crime to have your window broken, at least not in the part of the world I reside in. If I, a random person, told you to throw a rock at someone, and you did that, who would be responsible for the damage? You would not do this of course, but a child might do it. And then whose responsibillity would it be then? The parents, I assume. They might not be guilty, just responsible.
So everyone having his computer turned into a bot should have restricted access to the public space of the Web. 'Yes but no but..' that's not important, experience cannot be bought or earned, it's something that grows with practice, and starts with zero.