Twitter Used To Control Botnet Machines 127
DikSeaCup writes "Arbor Network's Jose Nazario, an expert on botnets, discovered what looks to be the first reported case of hackers using Twitter to control botnets. 'Hackers have long used IRC chat rooms to control botnets, and have continually used clever technologies, such as peer-to-peer strategies, to counter efforts to track, disrupt and sometimes decapitate the bots. Perhaps what's surprising then is that it's taken so long for hackers to take Twitter to the dark side.' The next step, of course, is to code the tweets in such a way that they aren't so suspicious."
Sure, but (Score:5, Funny)
Sure Twitter is just a large botnet, but is anyone really in control?
Holy shit! (Score:5, Funny)
Who knew Twitter had a use?!?!
I <3 English (Score:5, Funny)
"Twitter Used To Control Botnet Machines"
It used to, but it doesn't anymore, right?
It's easy to do. (Score:5, Funny)
No onE would Think of uSing slashdoT As we aRen'T nearly as oBviOus as someThiNg likE Twitter. // Especially with all our talk about supporting Linux and such.
tried it, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's not suspicious already (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm... so you're saying I should take out this cron entry...
... that I added per the instructions in some stranger's .sig?
Perl (Score:5, Funny)
The next step, of course, is to code the tweets in such a way that they aren't so suspicious
And people said that perl obfuscation, poetry, and golf tournaments didn't have any practical application. Ha!
Re:It's easy to do. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crowdsourced botnet (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Holy shit! (Score:4, Funny)
Twitter (read: mircoblogging) has tons of potential just waiting for imaginative developers.
>
Funny slip that you should call it "mircoblogging" since Twitter is basically logged IRC without channels (hashtags even use #) and a dysfunctional search. Welcome to 15 years ago, kids.
U2VjcmV0IGNvZGU= (Score:2, Funny)
d2hpbGUgKHRydWUpIHsNCiAgICBwaW5nIHR3aXR0ZXIuY29tDQp9
Re:Holy shit! (Score:3, Funny)
No can do. i'm entirely too stupid. i am so humbled before your superiority that all i can manage is to tell you how dumbfounded i am at your magnificence. You're clearly smarter than all the people working on using twitter for these applications. You could be the hero who saves the world, why are you keeping this secret to yourself? Save us!
Re:Perl (Score:4, Funny)
Twitter only 98% pointless babble (Score:3, Funny)
[to be posted [today.com] uh tomorrow, probably]
Only 98% of Twitter updates are "pointless babble," says a new report that studied 2,000 tweets over a period of two weeks.
The top category was "pointless babble" tweets, with nearly 98% of tweets being inanity no sane person could want to read, retweets of inanity, links to inanity, retweets of links to inanity and retweets of retweets of links to links to the reretweet itself. And camera phone pictures of bowel movements on Twitpic.
Almost 2% was Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman or retweets thereof and the rest was Warren Ellis posting scatological abuse of his fans.
Botnet command messages were becoming more popular, many disguised as combinations of the syllables "lol" "wtf" "d00d" "RT" and "#fb" or scatological abuse of Warren Ellis's fans.
Twitter's demographics as of June 2009 were 55% female, 43% ages 18 to 34, 78% white, and 99.5% of such short attention spans that Facebook might as well be War and Peace. Botnet readership was considered likely to rise as soon, nothing with organic intelligence would be able to cope.
Twitter recently redesigned its homepage, changing the tag "What are you doing now?" to "Post tomorrow's CNN headlines, particularly about #goatse."
Re:Holy shit! (Score:3, Funny)
Somebody finally found a way to monetize Twitter!
Re:Perl (Score:1, Funny)
*Actual Size.