25 Percent of All Computers in a Botnet? 408
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 (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?
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this is the internet, you can say fucking.
Re:Botnets (Score:5, Funny)
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this is the internet, you can say fucking.
This is Slashdot, where we also get computer references.
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Personality (Score:2)
Re:Botnets (Score:4, Funny)
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)
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)
The major ISPs will do it, but only if it's already costing them $$ in bandwidth.
Re:Request (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Request (Score:4, Informative)
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The rub... (Score:2, Insightful)
A good bot will install a root kit that will disable and/or lie to anti-virus software.
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Try AdAware [download.com], and your favorite antivirus software.
Re:Request (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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#!/bin/sh
[ -d
If you're on Windows, you might need to install cygwin first before running it. Works really well.
Use the poison as the cure. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Good play on words.
Ramen worm (Score:4, Informative)
Ramen worm is a great example of why free wins. (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the ramen worm that effected most Redhat systems and then disabled the exploits it used?
Thanks for the link, it's a great example of how free software rocks. Six years ago, Ramen ate through a few poorly maintained Red Hat 6.0 and 7.0 servers running WUFTP. It did not eat through Debian, Mandrake and other distributions because there are lots of ftp servers to chose from. It has not been heard from since. A diversity of software limits the damage any one flaw can cause. Automated update tools in
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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?
Somebody suggests this every once in awhile. I think it's been attempted, but the implementation was buggy, and it ended up causing more problems than it solved.
So problem #1 is that what you're suggesting is, in fact, illegal. Breaking into someone's PC to install security patches and clean up viruses is just as illegal as breaking into someone's PC to set up a spambot.
Problem #2 is that a virus that spreads to exploitable PCs for the purpose of cleaning them up will cause just as much strain on the net
25%? BS.... (Score:5, Funny)
And so it begins (Score:2)
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Or at least they run an emulator for them.
Law enforcement? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Me: Y'see, my brother just installed Linux, and...
RR Tech: And now he thinks he's Net God?
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Tell them to fuck off or they'll start expecting it. If you must do it, charge an hourly rate equivalent to a mechanic.
The Microsoft monopoly relies on schmucks like us freely donating our time to clearing up their shit. Put a $50/hour charge on your time and let Microsoft bask in the overdue respect they deserve.
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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.
That's already standard practice for us, to some extent. When we find out about a compromised customer, we issue a warning and if they do not respond or we get more complaints, we shut them down. Maybe twice in the last several years have we had to actually shut someone down. Usually when we tell them, they are more than happy to get it cleaned up because they had no idea anything was wrong (Or "I thought I'd been getting a lot of popups lately" or "it has been rather slow", etc.)
We also happen to be a PC
Me scared (Score:3, Funny)
(Another statistics victim)
Bogus Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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.
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Re:Bogus Numbers (Score:4, Funny)
They have antivirus software. It came with the computer when they bought it four years ago.
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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
South Korea? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ?
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> 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
Not unless the prosecution can show that you were in on the robbery.
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In a free society, there is no reason you should be apunished for that.
Now, if you did it so the bank robbers could get away, then your an accomplice.
Cybercrime (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Maybe if you live in some fantasy world. What happens to your class action lawsuit when Microsoft points to whole slews of computers that aren't infected and that are running just fine? Trying to fine Microsoft for stupid computer users is like trying to fine Ford for drunk driving deaths. Or fine Smith and Wesson for murders.
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Read the EULA. It claims to be able to do nothing. You're using it with the hope that it exceeds the claims, but that's *your* expectation, not Microsoft's promise. Making an insecure product that you aren't claiming is secure isn't against the law.
Suing Microsoft for insecurity is like suing Kool-Aid because their drink doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
Of course, IMHO the reason we're in this mess is Mic
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Aborted cliche (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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.
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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? (Score:5, Insightful)
This will change with Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
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'.
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Windows 9x had a well-deserved reputation for crashing all the time. Windows 2000 was barely usable when it first came out (because applications and drivers weren't written for NT), but once that got sorted out, it was pretty stable. Windows XP has that same level of stability, but it still crashes from time to time, not because of problems in the OS, but because of buggy drivers or third-party software - I've seen buggy drive
Riddle me this, botnet... (Score:2)
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 ab
1 in 4? (Score:3, Funny)
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)
What about a broadband users license? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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Re:Just install linux (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'm sure you probably conviced some people that "lamers" are in grave danger on Linux, but I suspect that the majority install stuff through repos anyway. Those that dabble around and even know how to run a script in Linux probably have a little more brains than you give them credit for.
I don't know why Microsoft, or another third party group, doesn't cr
Re:No OS is perfect at security...but some are bet (Score:3, Insightful)
Or just read the file in, delete it and write it out again. Delete permission on files is governed by the directory they're in; as long as you have write and execute on the containing directory, you can delete the file and recreate it. No need to guess anyone's password.
Try it for yourself - open a read-only file in your home directory with vi, modify it, and
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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)
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.
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"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.
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I have XP installation CDs. Not SP2, XP barebone. I had to reinstall. I made it once. I got Blaster in less than 5 minutes. Then I installed it again, this time with the network unplugged. I don't know how I could have downloaded the service pack without a knoppix CD at hand...
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp
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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.
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Re:How to stop the bots (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can empathize. I think most of those who are "content" aren't actually content. They're lost! They don't know how the problem started and certainly don't know how to fix it. Personally, I hate operating from a position of ignorance. I'm sure at least some, if not most of these folks do to. T
Re:How to stop the bots (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What about "Windows malicious software removal"? (Score:3, Funny)
Surely these botnets should be dying in their millions every Patch Tuesday....
What happened to that?
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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.
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Re:EVEN MORE SCARY it's 2 in 1 windows computers. (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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 the
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Better, though, would be to disable the bot and notify both the owner of the computer and the ISP.
Another possibility: a worm that just detects bots and notifies a server. This would give you a list of IPs that you could do all sorts of interesting things with.
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There, fixed that for you. This isn't about computers that might become zombies in a botnet, it's about those that already are. I'm still unsure of the ethics, but let's compare apples to apples rather than getting all hysterical, bringing emotionally charged situations into the conversation and making false anlogies.
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Ethical - yes.
Legal - no.
Fun - oh hell yeah.
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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.
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More recently, there have been programs claiming to spyware removers that are spyware themselves!
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