Zeus Botnet Down But Not Out 67
harryjohnston writes "The Register points out that the takedown of a significant number of Zeus command-and-control servers, which we discussed earlier, was a short-lived victory, as about one-third of the affected servers were back on the net in less than 48 hours." Adds itwbennet: "Just hours after network connectivity to Troyak was severed the ISP peered with a new upstream Internet service provider named Ya. The next step will be to 'de-peer' Troyak from its new service provider, either an ISP named Nassist or its upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, said a researcher familiar with the matter. 'We have taken some of their territory, they are trying to out flank us,' the researcher said via IM. 'We are going to win this one — we have 'em boxed in.'"
Sometimes headshots aren't enough (Score:2, Funny)
n/t
Rule #2 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Redundancy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually informative. Botnets are the very model of enterprise redundant high-availability. The technology is remarkable in its resilience. You could wipe out Europe and Asia with dual asteroids, and the thing would keep going.
If you want to keep your enterprise up no matter what happens then you need to be prepared for a headshot. They are, and it's not enough to bring them down. How prepared are you?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"I am the very model of good "high availability.
My peers and I retain a certain level of redundancy."
Damnit, I'm meant to be at work, not filking...
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Car Analogy (Score:1, Funny)
So the Zeus is like a Toyota. You get a fix for it but it turns out they'll just keep going anyway.
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Just no man, no. Let it go...
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Car analogies
I don't know how to quit you.
Well I'm sold. (Score:5, Funny)
Do you have to share the command and control server with other users? Or do they have a "private command server" option?
(On a side note- will twittering help my business?)
Re: (Score:2)
I remember the old days, when businesses just hired twits to run them.
Re:Well I'm sold. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can I host my e-commerce site on Zeus?
I'm not sure if this is funny or dreadfully insightful... Most data centers can't keep it up for a single year but then you have schmucks who keep these bot-nets up seemingly forever.
Are we looking at the future of serious web-hosting?
Re:Well I'm sold. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well I'm sold. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Well I'm sold. (Score:4, Interesting)
Embrace and extend, am I getting it right?
Yeah... think of a future EULA where you give a corporation or even some random freeware coder permission to use your computer while it's at idle and in exchange they give you a discount on your next purchase of $50 or more from their eStore or some other such idiocracy...
It sounds horribly doable so why pay to host the cloud when you can force your users to pay you for the privilege to do so?
And how would one police such a thing where everything is encrypted and special commands can be sent to a limited numbers of clients in very specific locals with no one being able to tell? I can thing of some serious evil that could be done where the end user would take the fall for cybercrime because no one at corporation X would ever abuse it's users.
Microsoft can't get everyone to pay for windows? no problem they release Windows 8 - Free bot-net Edition.. We are almost there now with the whole phone home every day to verify your copy WGA crap.
New DRM for your Game? Sure overwrite your game's executable every hour or change your encryption keys. Something not right on a hosts computer? Well the EULA clearly states you can nuke their OS. I mean it was on the box remember?
Heck, remember when Netzero was free because of the ad banner? This is far more evil and far more useful. Wanna play the new US Army 3D shooter game? Sure no problem, join the botnet today! It's free and we promise not to use your computer to DDoS Canada because they still don't have good enough copyright laws....
Or
What about a new closed source encrypted bit-torrent protocol where the user agrees to host part of the pirate bay database or track random torrents? You wanna download warez or music kid? Alright, but you gotta join our botnet first. Together we are strong right? I mean you're only 15 kid.... no one will arrest you for hosting kiddy porn or the latest best-of metallica holodisk.. I mean it's your evil parents who pay for the internet anyhow kid so forget-about-it....
Wow... I think I just totally lost what little mind I have left for a moment, sorry... now back to your normal slashdot flamewar already in progress...
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Microsoft can't get everyone to pay for windows? no problem they release Windows 8 - Free bot-net Edition..
Aside from the cost, how would this edition differ from other Windows releases?
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Aside from the cost, how would this edition differ from other Windows releases?
4 Registry key values, 1 dll and a special theme... O and it would be the beta test ground for all windows patches. No more patch Tuesday for those running this version...
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"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. "
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i think we should call it b2b - bot 2 bot.
You joke but I'm already on a conference call with a trademark and patent lawyer! You'll be licking my boot this time next year and thanking me for the honor...
Re:Well I'm sold. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called "bulletproof hosting". You pay in E-gold. Preferably from an account with a fake name.
But yes, they can keep your site up even against determined government-based opposition. They have private command server and random host virtual desktops. You can buy botnets by the host or rent them by the hosthour. DOS hosts are ready for your competitor throttling needs, and bulk discounts scale appropriately. Please be advised that certain challenging chores like DDoS of national infrastructure servers require open finance accounts and sufficient credit must be made available before the attack starts.
Almost without exception, the hosts themselves run Windows.
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It's called "bulletproof hosting". You pay in E-gold. Preferably from an account with a fake name.
Hey I got some venture capital over here! We just gotta western union it first but you can help me with that right?
Tom and Jerry (Score:1)
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Re:Here's how to defeat Zeus... (Score:5, Funny)
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All they had back then was lambskin.
So? Banging sheep is a perfectly good method of birth control.
Hah! captcha = untapped
This is so cool (Score:1)
Just like a real war..
"We got Charlie boxed in"
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Might work if you're fighting Charlie. It don't work if you're fighting Marines.
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time"
- Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC
Botnets (Score:1)
Re:Botnets (Score:5, Informative)
MalwareBytes is shockingly good at malware removal. Theres almost nothing else like it.
Also, dump Symantec and McAfee crapware for Microsoft Security Essentials or something like NOD32.
Symantec and McAfee no longer keep up with viruses. Every day I'm doing janitor on systems with Symantec Endpoint. I transfer the viruses from the infected machines to my own to submit them to Microsoft...but then Security Essentials picks them up. Symantec has no clue.
Re: (Score:2)
if Symantec and Norton and Mcafee are so pathetic, why does anyone bother with them anymore?
I have both companies (and ALL the products they make) on my personal "list of software I refuse to install on any PC I own" and have been recommending alternatives like AVG to anyone else (especially people who's computer I am re-installing or degunkifying)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They are ingrained and famous to PHBs.
Plus, they have lists of impressive features.
They still suck though.
Re:Botnets (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing special to it. It's just like a standard virus infection. Take the Blaster worm, for example. You can normally just look at router lights and see if someone's infected (well, unless there's a person constantly streaming music.) The point is that these zombies are up all day getting and receiving data, like a webhost. The data is either addresses to be newly infected, or new command data containing the payloads with the actual spam to be sent out.
If you turn off all the P2P apps, let the PC boot up to a desktop and the network light for that PC immediately goes non-stop for more than 15 minutes, you're infected. No buts.
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Or your computer could be downloading a new Office or Windows service pack....
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Don't know about you, but I set Automatic Updates to notify only on every computer I own. The hassle of downloading updates manually outweighs the downside of terrible latency.
Re:Botnets (Score:4, Funny)
Reboot the machine. If the startup screen says Windows, just go ahead and assume it's infested.
Kinda, yeah (Score:2)
-B
Re:Kinda, yeah (Score:4, Informative)
I've had a website hosted on Hurricane Electric since 1997. Email too. They've been really reliable.
Yeah, too bad they no longer are...
So it'd suck for them to go down because of some vigilante reaction to a botnet.
Indeed, that'll suck. I guess it's time now to shop around for a more trustworthy hosting provider?
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
I was worried about that too, since I've had hosting with HE, so I took a look at the routing history for Troyak's IPs.
Looks like any time Troyak spent transiting HE was limited to a couple hours. BGPlay shows AS50215's (Troyak) prefixes transited Nassist starting on the 10th. Shortly afterwards it looks like HE (6939) dropped those prefixes from Nassist, saw them from another peer, and then only saw them from Global Crossing (3549) (one of HE's transits). A little after that Nassist dropped the Troyak p
Maybe now is good time to start building wall (Score:1)
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We are learning valuable things (Score:2)
When SkyNet comes, we will know how to fight it!
Really need to stop.... (Score:1)
Some people really need to stop posting what they are doing or about to do....gives a heads up to the trojan writers what
to think of next to counter the attacks. I think it is a great feat none the less, but could we have really kept them down longer had we not
had a play by play....also like the Borg, now they know the type of attack vectors that are being used against them, so they will adapt, and figure a new way to connect to control and command centers, I know I would had i just finished spending all my