Researchers Infiltrate and 'Pollute' Storm Botnet

ancientribe writes "Dark Reading reports that a group of European researchers has found a way to disrupt the massive Storm botnet by infiltrating it and injecting "polluted" content into it to disrupt communication among the bots and their controlling hosts. Other researchers have historically shied way from this controversial method because they don't "want to mess with other peoples' PCs by injecting commands," said one botnet expert quoted in the article.

Re:It's not Really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless there's a problem with the command you send out and it completely wipes the end users hard drive and all their personal data or does something else destructive to the infected user.

And if I were a botnet author, I'd make absolutely sure that signs of such tampering would result in this (the DISABLE_ZOMBIE command in version 1.00 effects the WIPE_WHOLE_DRIVE command in update 1.01). Watch as the self-appointed saviour destroys the data (bla bla backups) on half a million computers world wide.

The road to Hell...

Re:It's not Really...

[guruevi]

Actually, it would be better to wipe their hard drive clean since then they would be directly impacted and see the loss caused by their stupidity. I already heard from users: yeah, I know I have a virus/trojan but it doesn't really do anything bad to my computer and that virus scanner makes my computer slower so I'll leave it there.

Also, it would give us geeks some extra income and we would have the opportunity to load Ubuntu on their machines.

Re:Public Key Cryptography and Message Signing.

[el_flynn]

And I would like to add my prediction: the botnet will implement captchas or kittens to detect the fake bots.

Re:It's not Really...

[0100010001010011]

"Your version of Microsoft XP has expired. Please buy a version of Microsoft Vista at your nearest authorized Microsoft dealer. If your computer does not support Vista you will be required to upgrade your computer.

Thank you for supporting Microsoft".

How's that?

Fools!

[Kingrames]

Nuke the sites from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!

Re:The terminology is confused

[geekoid]

Of course they are, don't be stupid.
There is a program running on their computer.
  You also assume they don't want it there.

Re:It's not Really...

[Cro Magnon]

And, can you picture the reaction of a Christian grandmother when her computer flashes the BSD devil at her?

Wow, Godwin in 2 posts...

[PRMan]

That's got to be some sort of record...

Re:Wow, Godwin in 2 posts...

[Daimanta]

Scrap an I in WWII and youa re all set for a non Godwin post ;)

Re:It's not Really...

[Ethanol-fueled]

Since your /. ID is under the millions, and you aren't new here, then you should know that nobody on /. Reads The Fucking Articles.

Mod parent down!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not particularly illegitimate to use them in that fashion, though. It's a matter of allocating limited resources, really. While I'll mod up posts I disagree with, but are insightful, if there are no posts I agree with available... I'd rather spend those mod points giving karma to people I agree with. Is it fair? Not entirely, but with only 5 or 10 points, there's only so much good you can do.

The real moderation bias which is a cause for concern is modding with negative mods as a substitute for "disagree". That's bullshit, and there's no excuse for it.

I couldn't agree with you more. Well said!! Mod parent down!!

Re:It's not Really...

[Sancho]

And years of training will cause the users to just click "Yes" so that they can see their naked picture of Natalie Portman petrified in hot grits.

The damage has already been done.

Re:It's not Really...

[overkill1024]

I think 2^20 or 1,048,576 is a much better cutoff. One million is just an arbitrary number gained from the use of base 10.

tit for tat

[AgentPhunk]

What is this 'tat' that you refer to, and where can I exchange it for this first thing?

Re:tit for tat

[khallow]

If you don't know, then you're too young to find out. ;-)