World's Largest Spam Botnet Adds DDoS Feature (bleepingcomputer.com) 26
An anonymous reader writes from a report via BleepingComputer: Necurs, the world's largest spam botnet with nearly five million infected bots, of which one million are active each day, has added a new module that can be used for launching DDoS attacks. The sheer size of the Necurs botnet, even in its worst days, dwarfs all of today's IoT botnets. The largest IoT botnet ever observed was Mirai Botnet #14 that managed to rack up around 400,000 bots towards the end of 2016 (albeit the owner of that botnet has now been arrested). If this new feature were to ever be used, a Necurs DDoS attack would easily break every DDoS record there is. Fortunately, no such attack has been seen until now. Until now, the Necurs botnet has been seen spreading the Dridex banking trojan and the Locky ransomware. According to industry experts, there's a low chance we'd see the Necurs botnet engage in DDoS attacks because the criminal group behind the botnet is already making too much money to risk exposing their full infrastructure in DDoS attacks.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Stupidity (Score:2)
Refusal by the US and EU to engage with Russian law enforcement, in order to forment the appearance of conflict, in the insane attempt to sell more guns and bullets for no other reason than insensate greed, blocks the ability to mutually cooperate to end the problem, fucking morons.
Contradictory (Score:2)
Why would they bother deploying a DDoS component if they did not intend to use it?
Perhaps they look after small DDoS against individuals, to gain advantage in network games, for instance. Or perhaps they are ready to split the botnet and resell parts to other actors that are interested in massive DDoS.
Re: Contradictory (Score:2, Interesting)
Could be for self defense. Someone scanning the botnet might be in for a nasty record setting DDoS surprise.