Tor Network Used To Command Skynet Botnet 105
angry tapir writes "Security researchers have identified a botnet controlled by its creators over the Tor anonymity network. It's likely that other botnet operators will adopt this approach, according to the team from vulnerability assessment and penetration testing firm Rapid7. The botnet is called Skynet and can be used to launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, generate Bitcoins — a type of virtual currency — using the processing power of graphics cards installed in infected computers, download and execute arbitrary files or steal login credentials for websites, including online banking ones. However, what really makes this botnet stand out is that its command and control (C&C) servers are only accessible from within the Tor anonymity network using the Tor Hidden Service protocol."
Yeah, and? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just the bot net people being lazy and taking the easy approach. It's already been shown you can design decentralized networks that require no "bootstrap" information like DNS in order to find other nodes and communicate. But it is beyond the abilities of these low-level social miscreants to create, so they're piggybacking on a network that they think can hide their malicious activity. Tor only anonymizes the source of the data; Anything between the exit node and destination is sent in the clear and likely they've made some mistake that'll allow it to be blockable.
Of course, this is exactly what the oppressive governments of the world (and those who oppress by claiming they're "liberating" others), have been looking for to shut down the Tor network. You can expect more attempts at legislating it away to come soon. Fundamentally though it doesn't solve the problem, which is that the criminal underworld has figured out how to do what industrialists figured out 50 years ago: If you take just a little from a lot of people, you can get very rich, and those people won't fight back because the cost of retaliation is higher than the loss. As a result, people everywhere are being nickel and dimed to death.
Botnets are simply the illegal mirror counterpart to the legal crime of draining pensions and unethical banking to turn a profit: Harm many only a little, and you too can be rich.