The World's Biggest Botnets

ancientribe writes "There's a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow the notorious Storm away in size and sophistication, according to researchers, and it's a direct result of how Storm has changed the botnet game, with more powerful and wily botnets on the horizon. This article provides a peek at the 'new Storm' and reveals the three biggest botnets in the world (including Storm) — and what makes them tick and what they are after."

Re:Imagine if you will

[Deltaspectre]

Or if everyone donated their CPU time to botnets!

spam spam spam spam and more spam

[User 956]

This article provides a peek at the 'new Storm' and reveals the three biggest botnets in the world (including Storm) -- and what makes them tick and what they are after.

From the look of things, it appears that their sole purpose is to send me myspace friend requests from lonely, hot girls that have Tom as their only friend, and have selected me as the lucky person who gets to share in viewing their private, personal website, which has many photos of their naked breasts and vagina. Seriously.

Re:Imagine if you will

[Misanthrope]

In Soviet Russia botnets donate cpu time to you.

security through obscurity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thankfully I run Windows, which is inherently more secure than your "open source" systems. These botnet creators can look right inside your operating systems and see the vulnerabilities, whereas with Windows...

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Storm on my computer and I've never been happier. Downloads are quicker, my mortgage has been refinanced, I made a fortune in the stock market, and my cock is 2 inches longer.

excellent botnet-er, would bot again++++!++!

Windows based Super Computers

[flyingfsck]

So the world's largest networked super computer runs Windows. It is sad really, all these hundreds of millions of computers on the planet - half of them sending spam for the other half to filter out. One would think that there should be something slightly more useful for them to do.

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[flyingfsck]

I'd feel a lot safer if you could get selinux to work on Windows...

Have you heard about the world's smallest botnet?

[moosejaw99]

Just ask my wife.

Re:Imagine if you will

[4D6963]

Or better yet, if each node ran a small neural net. with each node connected to many other nodes, the whole system might gain consciousness!

Right, because every AI researcher knows "strong AI" is as simple as creating a huge neural network and letting the magic happen ;-)

Re:Imagine if you will

[jandrese]

It seems to work just about as well as anything else they've tried.

Re:Microsoft isn't the only irresponsible company

[John Hasler]

> Netgear was very helpful. Tier1 tech support said securing the router was my
> responsibility.

Easily done. Place the router in a trashcan and secure the lid. Then scrounge up an old pc or laptop and put a Linux router on it.

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[nsanders]

I'd feel a lot better if I could get SELinux to work on Linux..

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[Wonko the Sane]

Is there really more than about 3 people in the world that actually have a working SELinux system? That they use on a day-to-day basis?

The World's Biggest Brothels

[nexuspal]

That's what I thought the name of the article was, I was like, cool! Then I was let down :-(.

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[Torvaun]

It's a well-known fact that SELinux was developed to confound hackers. It is a less-known fact that the trick is to try to get them to install it.

Re:Imagine if you will

[OGC]

Imagine if somebody did this but instead of donating time to distributed computing projects like that one on cancer research, the distributed computing project was to have the bot spread like a cancer, refuse to be treated like a cancer, and generally plague and cripple the world with problems like a cancer. Oh wait.

Re:Who need so to imagine?

[Anonymous Coward]

A duck vaccine? First we need to figure out if it'll float or weigh more than a witch.

Windows is winning

[definate]

You see this is exactly why Windows is winning. Linux is still yet to provide a credible botnet to face off against the Windows botnet. There's just no comparison, Windows wins every time!

Re:Imagine if you will

[p0ss]

I am waiting for someone to hire storm to attack echelon.

Re:Yes, free software would fix the problem.

[Opportunist]

I made that suggestion, but for some odd reason shooting morons launching executables named "invoice.pdf.exe" is considered illegal in my country.

Yeah, we got silly laws here.

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as NASA...

Strangely it still made sense.

I like big...

[doyoulikeworms]

Botnets and I cannot lie... :)

Re:Does it run on Windows?

[davester666]

...that doesn't run in 'insecure' mode.

Is there a secure mode for Windows? I mean, besides turning the computer off and unplugging all cables from the computer.

Re:Well....

[deviceb]

aye.. the people who construct these botnets know how to make the internet work better than most of its engineers.