botnet

Now that botnets get taken down one by the other with help of Microsoft and the FBI, there is a new trend among spammers according to a report by Commtouch Labs. Spammers are using compromised email accounts more and more and the last few months to fill your mailbox with unwanted advertisements and malware trickery.

Check the article on ZDNet for charts and details.

Reports on the TDL-4 botnet are surfacing on the Internet more and more in the last couple of weeks. I clipped this post since it summarizes very well what this botnet is about.

Unfortunately this is a cat-and-mouse game that is very hard to win. Nevertheless, this is a nice victory.

An interesting story about FireEye: a company from Silicon Valley that specializes in protecting governments and companies against malware. The article also discusses the history and development of botnets, what FireEye does to take them out of business. In particular the takedown of the Rustock botnet is explained in interesting detail.

"We just hacked an FBI affiliated website (Infragard, specifically the Atlanta chapter) and leaked its user base. We also took complete control over the site and defaced it, check it out if it's still up: http://infragardatlanta.org/
While not very many logins (around 180), we'd like to take the time to point out that all of them are affiliated with the FBI in some way. Most of them reuse their passwords in other places, which is heavily frowned upon in the FBI/Infragard handbook and generally everywhere else too"

This opinion piece describes the actions of the FBI which resulted in the takedown of the Coreflood botnet.

The question that some people and privacy advocates ask is: has the FBI gone to far? By interfering with botnet-infected PCs of private people and possibly a lot of company computers as well, there is a possibility that the FBI's actions could have damaged a (small?) number of PCs.

Furthermore the role of the ISPs is discussed. In the opinion of the author, ISPs should play a far more active role to prevent infections and finding and informing infected users. I agree with him on this subject. Although I doubt this will take off because of (again) privacy concerns.

Read the linked article for the full story.

It seems that online gamers ain't safe anymore either. Players of Eve Online are at risk losing their virtual currencies and resources by getting attacked in DDoS attacks or other hostile actions. This is sad really.

Read the original post on The Register for more details.

There is only one word for this: disgusting...
Can't we drop the guys responsible for this into the Fukushima plant?

In my previous post I wrote about the takedown of the Rustock botnet. At the time, nobody knew who was responsible for this action. It turns out now that Microsoft's digital crimes unit was behind it in close cooperation with federal law inforcement agents. Now who'd have thought that?

Nice one, guys! Keep up the good work. Show these spammers a lesson!

Some people might hate Apple because of their control over their software, hardware and apps, but... the flipside is a system with no control and the potential for abuse. Which do you prefer?

The top 10 botnets are responsible for 57% of all infections, says Damballa report.

By Mathew J. Schwartz

In a current reportPDF, anti-botnet specialists at Damballa write that the number of bot-infected PCs worldwide increased sevenfold within a year, although no absolute figures are mentioned. The researchers consider that the expansive growth in 2010 was caused by the increasing availability of "exploit packs" and trojan toolkits. Such tools enable criminals without programming skills to assemble their attack weapons and malware with a few simple mouse clicks. Toolkit prices range between $100 and $1,000.