NYT Reports Porn Spam Hijacking Network

twitter writes "This NYT story describes how thousands of PCs have been used as porn spambots and reverse proxy servers, and mentions that they could be used for kiddie porn. Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, people might start to understand what a monoculture of poor quality software enables."

Whew!

[TopShelf]

Now I've got a great new excuse when the wife stumbles onto things...

is it me, or is it crazy?

[bongoras]

"The rogue program does not affect the Apple Macintosh line of computers or computers running variants of the Unix operating system."

so um, not to Microsoft bash or anything, but what OS does this 'sploit attack then?

Re:Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear:

[ ] Clueless Newbie [ ] Lamer [ ] Flamer
[ ] Loser [ ] Spammer [ ] Troller
[ ] "Me too" er [ ] Pervert [ ] Geek
[ ] Freak [ ] Nerd [ ] Elvis
[ ] Racist [ ] Fed [ ] Freak
[ ] Fundamentalist [ ] Satanist [ ] Homeopath
[ ] Unbearably self-righteous person

I took exception to your recent:

[ ] Email [ ] Post to ____________________.
(newsgroup)

It was (check all that apply):

[ ] Lame [ ] Stupid [ ] Abusive
[ ] Clueless [ ] Idiotic [ ] Brain-damaged
[ ] Imbecilic [ ] Arrogant [ ] Malevolent
[ ] Contemptible [ ] Libelous [ ] Ignorant
[ ] Clueless [ ] Stupid [ ] Fundamentalist
[ ] Boring [ ] Dim [ ] Cowardly
[ ] Deceitful [ ] Demented [ ] Self-righteous
[ ] Crazy [ ] Weird [ ] Hypocritical
[ ] Loathsome [ ] Satanic [ ] Despicable
[ ] Belligerent [ ] Mind-numbing [ ] Maladroit
[ ] Much longer than any worthwhile thought of which you may be capable.

Your attention is drawn to the fact that:

[ ] You posted what should have been emailed
[ ] You obviously don't know how to read your newsgroups line
[ ] You are trying to make money on a non-commercial newsgroup
[ ] You self-righteously impose your religious beliefs on others
[ ] You self-righteously impose your racial beliefs on others
[ ] You posted a binary in a non-binaries group
[ ] You don't know which group to post in
[ ] You posted something totally uninteresting
[ ] You crossposted to *way* too many newsgroups
[ ] I don't like your tone of voice
[ ] What you posted has been done before.
[ ] Not only that, it was also done better the last time.
[ ] You quoted an *entire* post in your reply
[ ] You started a long, stupid thread
[ ] You continued spreading a long stupid thread
[ ] Your post is absurdly off topic for where you posted it
[ ] You posted a followup to crossposted robot-generated spam
[ ] You posted a "test" in a discussion group rather than in alt.test
[ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message
[ ] You posted low-IQ flamebait
[ ] You posted a blatantly obvious troll
[ ] You followed up to a blatantly obvious troll
[ ] You said "me too" to something
[ ] You make no sense
[ ] Your sig/alias is dreadful
[ ] You must have spent your life in a skinner box to be this clueless.
[ ] You posted a phone-sex ad
[ ] You posted a stupid pyramid money making scheme
[ ] You claimed a pyramid-scheme/chain letter for money was legal
[ ] Your margin settings (or lack of) make your post unreadable. Each line
just goes on and on, not stopping at 75 characters, making it hard to read.
[ ] You posted in ELitE CaPitALs to look k0OwL
[ ] You posted a message in ALL CAPS, and you don't even own a TRS-80
[ ] Your post was FULL of RANDOM CAPS for NO APPARENT REASON
[ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of this newsgroup.
[ ] You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of the Internet.
[ ] You are a loser.
[ ] This has been pointed out to you before.
[ ] You didn't do anything specific, but appear to be so generally
worthless that you are being flamed on general principles.

It is recommended that you:

[ ] Get a clue
[ ] Get a life
[ ] Go away
[ ] Grow up
[ ] Never post again
[ ] Read every newsgroup you posted to for a week
[ ] stop reading Usenet news and get a life
[ ] stop sending Email and get a life
[ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it
[ ] Have your medication adjusted
[ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor
[ ] find a volcano and throw yourself in
[ ] get a gun and shoot yourself
[ ] Actually post something relevant
[ ] Read the FAQ
[ ] stick to FidoNet and come back when you've grown up
[ ] Apologize to everybody in this newsgroup
[ ] consume excrement
[ ] consume excrement and thus expir

Recommended Daily Allowance

[Faust7]

Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned,

Oh, but we'll take care of that.

translation

[sammy baby]

Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, people might start to understand what a monoculture of poor quality software enables.

Translation:

Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, I felt the need to work some shrill anti-Microsoft propaganda into this post, so Fuck Bill! And Free Kevin!

Great.

[Unknown Poltroon]

I needed a new place to store/share mp3s.

A little late

[one9nine]

Pete Townsend could have used this article a few months ago.

Re:Whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does she stumble upon kiddie-porn very often on your PC?

j/k ;)

Re:Whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragmen

Re:FUD

[Surak]

Some random guy says grillions of computers are infected with an undetectable virus and is going to distribute kiddie porn!!"

Is that some sort of new grilled onion sandwich at Burger King? ;)

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

the best 404 I've ever seen:

The New York Times story cannot be displayed
The story you are looking for is currently unavailable. The paper might be experiencing technical difficulties, or more likely the story has been withdrawn due to inaccuracies.

Please try the following:

Click the #Invent story button, or try again later.

If you are Jayson Blair and typed the the name of the story in the address bar, make sure it was your story.

To check your newspaper story, click the FACTS menu, and then click Check Sources. On the Plagiarism tab, click No. These settings should match those provided by your Editor.
Even if the editor has not enabled it, the blogosphere can examine the story and automatically discover inaccurate and misleading aspects.
If you would like to use the Blogosphere to try and discover them, click #Andrew Sullivan
Some papers require 170 thousand antiquities to be sacked from museums. Click the #Fisk menu and then click Anti-American bias to determine what level of museum looting your paper will broadcast.
If you are trying to reach a story worth reading, try going back in time when journalistic standards were not sacrificed on the off-chance of a story with a negative Anti-American spin.
Click the #exit button button if you are Howell Raines.

Cannot find story or Plagiarism Error
Instapundit.com Explorer

Where do I sign up?

[Asprin]

So you're saying all I have to do is install one of those screensavers shrouded in four web-site redirections and I can sit back and wait for some pirate in The Phillipines to jack all the 1337 w4r3z and pr0n for me?

Dude! This is better than PointCast **AND** Kazaa -- The stuff just shows up! It's like subscribing to the FBI files-you-shouldn't-have mailing list!

Spyware and viruses r0ck!

Re:Heh

[Osrin]

Personally, I quite like my Nigerian porn dialer.

Terrible

[Eccles]

This is terrible.

They put all that porn on my computer, and I don't even get to see it?

Oops... here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

More than a thousand unsuspecting Internet users around the world have recently had their computers hijacked by hackers, who computer security experts say are using them for pornographic Web sites. The hijacked computers, which are chosen by the hackers apparently because they have high-speed connections to the Internet, are secretly loaded with software that makes them send explicit Web pages advertising pornographic sites and offer to sign visitors up as customers. Unless the owner of the hijacked computer is technologically sophisticated, the activity is likely to go unnoticed. The program, which only briefly downloads the pornographic material to the usurped computer, is invisible to the computer's owner. It apparently does not harm the computer or disturb its operation. The hackers operating the ring direct traffic to each hijacked computer in their network for a few minutes at a time, quickly rotating through a large number. Some are also used to send spam e-mail messages to boost traffic to the sites. "Here people are sort of involved in the porno business and don't even know it," said Richard M. Smith, an independent computer researcher who first noticed the problem earlier this month. Mr. Smith said he thought the ring could be traced to Russian senders of spam, or unwanted commercial e-mail. By hiding behind a ring of machines, the senders can cloak their identity while helping to solve one of the biggest problems for purveyors of pornography and spam: getting shut down by Internet service providers who receive complaints about the raunchy material. The web of front machines hides the identity of the true server computer so "there's no individual computer to shut down," Mr. Smith said. "We're dealing with somebody here who is very clever." By monitoring Web traffic to the porn advertisements, Mr. Smith has counted more than a thousand machines that have been affected. The creators of the ring, whose identities are unknown, are collecting money from the pornographic sites for signing up customers, the security experts say. Many companies play this role in Internet commerce, getting referral fees for driving customers to sites with which they have no other connection. The ring system could also be used by the hackers to skim off the credit card numbers of the people signing up, said Joe Stewart, senior intrusion analyst with Lurhq, a computer security company based in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The current version of the ring is not completely anonymous, since the hijacked machines download the pornographic ads from a single Web server. According to the computer investigators, that machine apparently is owned by Everyones Internet, a large independent Internet service company in Houston that also offers Web hosting services to a large number of companies. Jeff Lowenberg, the company's vice president of operations, said that he was not aware of any illegal activity on one of his company's computers but said that he would investigate. Mr. Stewart said the ring was most likely a work in progress, and that flaws, like being tied to a single server, would be eliminated over time. He said the ring was troubling not just because of what it is being used for now but also because of what it might be used for next. "This system is especially worrisome because they have an end-to-end anonymous system for spamming and running scams," he said. "It's not a far stretch to say that people who are running kiddie porn sites could say, `Hey, this is something we could use.' " The computer ring is the latest in an evolution of attacks that allow creators of spam and illicit computer schemes to use other people's computers as accomplices. For several years, senders of spam have relied upon a vestigial element of the Internet mail infrastructure known as "open relay" to use Internet servers as conduits for their spam. As network administrators have gradually shut down the open relay networks, spam senders have used viruses to plant similar capabilities on home and business computers. But this appears to be the first viral infection to cause t

But is it worth giving up Linux?

[expro]

But is it worth giving up Linux to run Windows so you can claim to have been vulnerable?

Re:Heh

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

I just got a new Nigerian Porn Dialer that offers a 1.5% cash back bonus and a higher credit limit, why would I want to give that up?

Re:FUD

[httptech]

It's not FUD. You have to realize the concept of a reverse-proxy is not something most NY Times readers are going to understand, so those details get left out a lot. But this really is what's happening. More technical details are here:

http://www.lurhq.com/migmaf.html [lurhq.com]

Also search Google Groups for "onlycoredomains.com"

The real blame...

[Rombuu]

Finally, though Microsoft is not mentioned, people might start to understand what a monoculture of poor quality software enables.

I blame K & R for writing such a fundamentially broken language in the first place.

Re:Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the old adage, if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

Actually, it is "if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the precipitate".

Re:What's new about this?

[Frater 219]

Someone (by someone, I mean companies that put out SMTP servers with a large share of the market) should strike while the iron is hot and take it a step further by airing some simple PSA's during a small assortment of shows. Maybe some must see TV "The More You Know" type thing...

[Fade in on dim interior of grimy trailer packed with disused computer equipment and swimsuit calendars. Greasy-looking SPAMMER puts down a half-eaten slice of cold pizza and starts dialing the phone.]

SPAMMER: Hello, is this Ms. Smith? I was wondering, would you mind if I used your computer to put some pirated pornography on the Web? [click, dial tone in background] Hello? Ms. Smith?

[Cut among views of SPAMMER on the phone, sleazy as ever.]

SPAMMER: Could I borrow your computer to send millions of spam emails? [click]

SPAMMER: ... just want to use it to run a quick scam -- [click]

SPAMMER: Uh, Mr. Jones, could I steal passwords -- [click]

SPAMMER: ... I want to crack into eBay and rip people off, could I use your computer for that? [click]

[SPAMMER looks sweatier and nervous, impatient and guilty.]

SPAMMER: [click] Hello? Hello?

[SPAMMER puts the phone down and starts typing, face illuminated by the screen.]

JAMES EARL JONES VOICEOVER: In the real world, spammers and Internet criminals don't ask your permission. They use viruses and insecure computers world-wide to steal from people. To find out what you can do to protect yourself and your family from crime on the Internet, log on to computer security dot gov.

[Fade out to black screen:]

http://computersecurity.gov/
Take a byte out of crime.

JAMES EARL JONES VOICEOVER: Brought to you by the FBI and the SANS Institute.

Slashdot as an extortion tool?

[Oms]

Hackers from the former Soviet Union have been linked to several schemes, including extortion attempts in which they threaten to shut down online casinos through Internet attacks unless the companies pay them off.

\begin{sinister Slavic voice}
You must pay one gazillion dollars to my PayPal account immediately, or I will post a link to your site on Slashdot.
\end{sinister Slavic voice}

P.S. I happen to be a hacker from the former Soviet Union.

Re:Give it a rest with the Windows bashing already

[Anonymous Coward]

Dipwad. Government CAN'T crack down on open source software. America ain't the only country you know. Yeah, the US might crack down on something, so to speak, but they would have to succeed in shutting down all the kernel mirrors and then effectively make all ISPs censor where their firewalls will let you go to.

Get real.

We're not austrailia YET.

It's not a bug--It's a feature

[Jeremy Erwin]

Ever hear of load balancing? Microsoft allows users to load balance over many hundreds of machines? Can your precious Linux do that?

Re:Heh

[CharterTerminal]

[...] everyday, I get phone calls about pr0n email that she has received. She takes great delight in explicitlly describing the contents of the message, and then pretending to be offended. Then I get the "Why don't you do something about this" statement.

Tell her "Look, lady, I'm sorry if you feel neglected, but I'm sending out as much of it as I can. I'll send you a couple extra tonight when I get home, but after that, I can't make any promises." Then apologize for having misspelled "barnyard" in the subject line.

Re:Heh

[chimpo13]

Prove yourself competent? Oh yeah, that's why Americans are such great drivers. In fact, I'm on my PDA on the freeway eating Burger King. I just finished shaving, so I figured I'd flip through slashdot while I drove. Oh, there goes the cell phone. Now I'll have to turn down the volume on Star Wars which is showing on the dashboard of my SUV.

Re:Heh

[One Louder]

I agree with you. The reporter was clearly very sloppy. He should have said:

"The rogue program does not affect the beleaguered Apple Macintosh line of computers or computers running variants of the evil hacker Unix operating system."

Re:Heh

[Chatmag]

"Cars are nothing like computers." Now he tells me. Does anyone know how to remove a quart of 10W30 from a CPU? The fan was a bit noisy, so I thought I'd oil it.