McColo Briefly Returns, Hands Off Botnet Control 242
A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world's spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. "The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to ... Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they'd report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo's demise isn't likely to last."
In Soviet Russia (Score:3, Funny)
Sesame seed bun is on two all spam patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions.
This just in! (Score:5, Funny)
this is great news (Score:4, Funny)
My penis thanks them, my very very large penis which is located in a recently refinanced home, that is.
Now as soon as my good friend MR AUSTINE OWOH is able to complete the transfer of my long lost uncle's estate from probate in Nigeria to my onshore checking account, I will be perfect, perfect with a very very large penis, that is.
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Final Solution: (Score:1, Funny)
I say we take off and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:3, Funny)
As long as people keep opting-in to running botnet nodes, we'll have this problem. Don't like it? Stop participating in the botnet.
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:4, Funny)
Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Sadly, it's true :(
Re:Alas... (Score:5, Funny)
The Internet could route around McColo too, if say, it were burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Or barring that, some 'hard pipe-hittin' thugs' somehow gained access to the building and went on a smashing spree. Anyone want to set up a donation box to hire somee thugs?
After all, what's this doing for us? It sounds almost like..well..treason! A foreign power is accessing systems in the United States and is using those systems to infect/enslave other systems. I wouldn't shed a tear if a black ops detachment traced the stuff back to its source and C4ed the offending equipment/operators in Russia or wherever they're coming from.