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Infected PCs for Rent
prostoalex writes "UK authorities are raising concerns about entire networks of infected and compromised PCs (BotNets) being available for sale or rent to the highest bidder. The Register quotes a detective from Hi-Tech Crime Unit saying 'The trade of BotNets of compromised machines is becoming an industry in itself. Organised crime is making use of this industry.'"
Install distcc, and install Gentoo in record time.
Kinda sad to see IBM, HP, and others lagging so badly in commercializing this important new technology.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This is exactly the same sort of problem that happens in the world of prostitution: pay your "rent", get a disease.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Good to see big industry players using their expertise and experience to enable new market creation.
Didn't I just read this story?
Damn, one more thing I can't do with my mac.
If you can sell it, you can get stung selling it. This may be the sort of thing that law enforcement agencies need in order to start busting people.
Now, if we just BLOCK connections from windows boxes to our machines except for (say) WWW or DNS, then our lives are better. pf (in openbsd and now freebsd 5) can do it.
Me? I'm pulling IPv4 stakes up. Only been spammed once by someone with an IPv6 address.
While it is deplorable that it takes criminal action (or porn) to move technologies to the forefront, it does happen. This, to me, seems like the famed "Grid Computing", and whilst stopping criminals, I hope law enforcement learns enough to pass the knowledge on so that others can use it for legitimate computing.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
With the number of known vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems, (not to mention the ones we don't even know about) it is really not hard to imagine these botnets being frighteningly large. I read one article that estimated the current number at something like 100,000! I'm doubt it's enough to bring down the entire Internet, but this could still be capable of providing some crushing DoS attacks, a la SCO.
Gives some merit to distributed hosting companies like akamai, etc.
There's hardly any software of any kind for the Mac. This is true in all categories, even viruses and worm programs. The Mac user who laughs because there are no worms for the Mac also cries because there are no games, sparse business applications, and a "big fat 0" throughout the different types of apps.
I'm sure this will be redundant by the time it's posted, but at the bottom of the article:
The new Microsoft Partner Programme is here. Bringing all the advantages of previous programmes into a single framework, we've made it easier than ever for Partners to engage with Microsoft.
With three levels to choose from, you can select the one that works best for your organisation.
Become a Registered Member today. No fee. No obligation. Just clear business benefits, including:
Free business-critical telephone support (charged at national rate)
Free online technical support
Online sales and marketing resources
Sales and technical training
For more information, please visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/programme
How? Am I confused by think of organised crime like the New York or Russian Maffia.
Half of your links are broken.
And why aren't we supposed to blame the dumb-shit who doesn't Update their system, install AV nor Firewall on his Winblows box?
what we need is a good destructive worm to take care of these. "sorry, you're too stupid to use the internet, deleting harddrive."
Man, it'd sure be weird if the RIAA started grabbing some of these compromised systems for their own use.
It'd kinda leave some people in a quandry, wouldn't it?
Let me guess. As a result of excessive anti-spam and spyware legislation (to go along with mandatory national ID cards and other measures designed to keep the British public "safe" ), the spam industry has been driven underground and has become a new source of revenue for the criminal element.
Anyone who is wondering what the future will be like ought to look at the previous article about China. Does it make sense? It doesn't have to. People are simply more likely to want to impose upon others than rely upon themselves. As a result, we'll all eventually be chained together and herded like cattle.
You cannot rent these to get those outrageous URT2K4 frame rates you all crave so much. However, it does make me think about writing a "bail me out" script to log some of these machines on a game server as my "back up". Hmmm....
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
In Soviet Russia computers rent you.
We need to start beating the living crap out of people who mess with our stuff. Spammers, malware writers, black hats, you wouldn't put up with the neighborhood kid stealing your bike would you? No. You'd go kick his ass and take back your back. It's time to start kicking ass and taking back our Internet.
That's the LEAST of his problems.
Whole warehouses of infected PCs for sale? Sweet. I think I'm gonna hit up this place right after I swing by the used syringe lot.
- sm
I find this article on infected PC's/networks for rent so full of sh..#$.\10# \AE \3H......
Welcome!
This PC is for rent.
Please contact us at
www.Claria.com
The scope of this is huge - true - I'm no industry player or top level developer - but still - we can all see the scope of this.
distributed applications are the killer app of the internet - XAML, .net, Java - all buzzwords. Grid computing - thanks to Oracle - The Internet - so much scope it created the biggest financial bubble in the history of capitalism.
Now - the corporates (MS?) are getting so inept that criminal gangs are stealing our future off us. Please - let's start stopping them.
i'm trying to give up sigs.
While OS X is an improvement over the much harder to use previous versions (no CLI), it makes you wonder why it took 9 OS versions BEFORE they ever decided to make a serious OS. As for marketing and stylish designs and students-with-Apples: hate to break it to you: this is nothing different. We've had this same situation since 1978 or so, and Apple's share of the pie is smaller now than it was then.
Absolutely! Boot to a CD, do a low-level format, or install a new hard drive, and that great deal you got is really truly a great deal! I wish that someone would sell me an infected dual 1.5GHz PowerMac G5 for cheap. Unfortunately, these sorts of infections--while not impossible on the Mac platform--are far less common, so I doubt that'll happen. *Sigh*.
The CB App. What's your 20?
A guy I know runs his unpatched Windows XP computer 24/7, and never does virus scans. The other day he got 1000+ (around 400mb) executable files in his C home directory. I asked him what he plans to do about it, and surprisingly enough he didn't want to apply critical updates. He said he doesn't care what people do to his computer, because he does nothing important on it. It amazes how many people must think like him.
I told you /. was a DDOS front! Most of these 'stories' are placed by competiors of the companies linked from the stories...
I TOLD YOU!!!
Is there anything that Organised Crime isn't making use of these days?
I just wrote a (bad) paper on a networking structure for games systems. I give it three weeks from when I hand it in until Organised Crime get their hooks into it. Apparently film piracy is also part of Organised Crime, and not my mate Donn, as I have previously thought.
Call me a cynic - but it seems to me that anyone who wants to get the media in on their thing cites Organised Crime as a benefactor and watches the links roll in.
OK - I'm done.
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
NO, because I don't understand what you would like me to do. English please!
I strongly believe that the most effective way to end this would be to scan for compromised nodes, identify them, and KNOCK THEM OUT. Then the user can call the local home-computer fixit guy to come fix their computer. He'll see it's infected with malware and fix it. User gets his computer fixed, fixit guy makes a buck, and one less node is spewing out sh*t.
Yes, I know this approach would be illegal. A felony computer crime in fact. I want legislation to make it legal and justified. I see it as self defense. Compromised nodes are clogging the internet with crap and the best defense is to knock them off-line. If I were standing in the middle of the freeway, clogging traffic and causing accidents the police would come remove me, by force if necessary. I see zombie nodes on the internet the same way.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
Scene: A Courtroom
Bailiff The first court of Onlineia is now in session, Honorable Judge Foo presiding. Judge I have read your complaint. Let's hear from the plaintiff. Plaintiff Thank you, your honor. In our case, we intend to prove that the defendant, in violation of our terms of service, removed the viruses we had gone through great trouble to install and operate on a network of computers, leading to considerable monetary damages in the sum of $1.2 million Judge You may call your first witness Plaintiff Thank you, your honor. We call J. Random HackerBailiff swears in J.R.H.
Plaintiff Mister Hacker. Did you, on 21 May 2004 rent for exclusive use, twenty-four hours of access to our BotNet DeLuxe service? JRH I did Plaintiff And what was your intention when you rented use of the cluster? JRH Well, at first I just wanted to set up a program to repeatedly check the home page on slasdot, trying to get first post Plaintiff And how did you go about that? JRH Well, I wrote this monster of a VB Program, but it was really buggy and I could not get it to work, so I decided to switch to Ruby Plaintiff And what happened next? JRH Well, I chose to install Geekdist Linux 12.11 because it came with the toolchain I was accustomed to Plaintiff But, did you not agree, when you rented this exclusive access not to damage our network in any way? JRH I guess so... write your own ending.
I think a good path for D. to take would be to show that P. does not have standing to bring the case in the first place, but that probably would have come up in pretrial motions... I have to go work
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
...the highest bidder!
Really, I do find this fascinating, albeit in an underhanded way.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
Presumably the exploitation of these victim-lists will proliferate with all the automated efficiency that is the spammer's hallmark. At its logical extreme, there'll soon be multiple spammers descending simultaneously en masse onto each listed victim, which one way or another results in the victim being shut down (presumably).
So, might the predators eat themselves out of existence?
(I know. I've been watching too much sci-fi.)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Duh. If you can get a Ho in the Big House for a carton of smokes, why not the same for the Beyatches of the web?
Yeah, right.
2 and 6 Guvnor, you know you want it. Orl yer Viagra and Nigerian Malarkey - perfect for it, it is!
Oh... Come on Guv!
Let's call it a Tanner then.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Hey! Maybe Microsoft can open their internal network to the world? That'll add a couple billion to the bottom line.
You want both the Mofia and the FBI hunting you down? Well, maybe not the FBI, they may just wait until the Mofia is done with you.
This reminds me of prison sex- first they violate you for the pleasure of it, then you become so degraded they rent your ass out.
Tracing controllers of a botnet is next to impossible ... and everyone says that the people running the trojans are innocent victims. Well, this is going to carry on until the 'victims' are punished for their BLATANT NEGLIGENCE. They CHOOSE to run M$ software, and Outlook ... therefore they CHOOSE to run the risk of viruses. I say we start cutting them off their ISPs, maybe even prosecuting a few to make an example of them ... windoze lusers will start paying attention to their security *then*, and botnets will die.
You've NEVER used EFNET, have you?
This shit has been happening for years, virtually unchanged. The only difference is that now it's slightly more automated than it used to be, slightly more publically visible, and slightly more capitalist in nature. But what this article is describing was totally standard for the botnet wars in 1997, just then it was Wingates and "shells" instead of worm infections and "Zombies".
(Posted AC because I'm paranoid.)
... for $12/h. Who wants it?
unfortunately, this would be illegal. however, that won't stop anyone; what's stopping people from doing this is that to someone who could do it it's a waste of resources. if you have all those machines out there you can get your hands on, why not use them for your own nefarious purposes, since the people who own them neither have the common sense nor the ability to control their own machines.
is to hold individuals and companies responsible for their computers. Let's face it: the only reason these botnets exist in the first place is because people are lazy or indifferent about security. It seems clear that this isn't going to change unless people have an incentive. Fines or other sentences for failure to maintain their system integrity would provide the necessary motivation.
I'm almost to the point of advocating penalties against software developers, too. I want to vomit bile every time I see a post on Bugtraq about an exploitable overflow due to some dumbass developer was too damned lazy to check the length of an input before blindly using it. How about this: for every buffer overflow discovered by a third party in your software, you lose a finger.
We have a bot network problem like everyone else... these things riding in on the coat-tails of the M$ft vulnerabilities has given us the 'ol one-two punch.
We estimate anywhere between 400 and 1500 of the ~10,000 on campus (student resedential) machines have some sort of back door installed.
We have blocked any incoming traffic to any dorm machine (regrefully) so they can't be controlled from outside because we mostly are tired of getting blacklisted for DoSing people or for spamming.
The saving grace has been TippingPoint, a network traffic analysis tool that sits behind the backbone routers and adds a latency-free checkpoint dropping traffic related to the M$ft security exploits. And when they get Blaster, Bagle, Nachi, etc etc etc they get automatically disabled by the routers and we (IT Services Support on campus) either fix their issues for them or they have to fix them themselves. When fixed they are automatically re-enabled.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Some of the viruses leave easy-to-locate proxies or back doors, which let anybody just take over the infected machine. But others, perhaps most, use some sort of password protection or polymorphism to hide their activities, so you can't just hand them a better payload to work with, like LILO or FORMAT C: or ROUTE -F. They may still leave the original Windows weakness unpatched, or they may close it, though appallingly many of the weaknesses are located between the keyboard and the chair - mail the user another picture of dancing penguins and you can install whatever you want. (Doobie doobie doo...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The alternative reference is something about "Restaurant at the End of the Unibus"
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
i for one welcome our infected pc overlords
I bought my laptop used. It had "property of Rent-A-PC" stickers on it, and my first night with it was spent eradicating a multitude of virii. I bet a lot of people who buy used PCs don't think of checking them for mal-ware right off the bat.
-Rich
Most countries have some sort of legally enforceable quarantine and notifiable disease regulations relating to human health. Nations need to give serious thought to instituting corresponding legally binding provisions on externally linked computer systems.
If companies and individuals were taken offline and/or fined for infecting others, we could expect that more trouble would be taken to put in place appropriate precautions.
Everyone knows that there is a problem, so no-one can claim innocence. Letting your system become infected and infect others is to be complicit with the virus writers, and you deserve to be treated as a criminal not a victim.
At this point, mandatory DRM will be lobbyslated by our congresswhores or the RIAA/MPAA/BSA will be made powerless, as everyone with a pOwnzored box is currently not held responsible for computer maintenance - lawsuits would come to a head, and the wrong person will finally be sued, who will take them on. Either way, I think I have (not) made my point.
Don't know about the status quo, but I remember a year or 3 ago stolen credit card numbers factored into this trade as well. Makes the paper trail pretty otugh to follow...
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
I hate to say it, but the only solution for Windows users is Paladium. Yes, Paladium prevents users from running the software of their choice and effectively puts their machine under the control of Microsoft. But their stupid choices are the problem! Besides, if they really wanted choice, they wouldn't be running Windows.
Paladium doesn't fix the system security holes, but it does fix the biggest security hole on most Windows machines - the user. It could be good for the net - provided that responsible users aren't forced to use it. At present, the test is easy. Windows users need Paladium. Others don't. (Yes, I know there are competent Windows users out there - but I've never met one.)
When I play BZflag, if you do certain activities too often (teamkilling, usually) the server will usually automatically kick you.
If your computer is infected with malware (spamware, adware, spyware, trojans, viruses, etc), it will constantly be generating large amounts of traffic on seemingly random ports. Your ISP will kick you for being a danger to the rest of the Internet. If you attempt to reconnect without cleaning your computer, you will be kicked again.
Isn't that just a little bit like slashdot? Post a story with a link to a site and DDoS takes it down. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to bribe the editors to post some bogus story with a link like "super lego robots of death."
Did you look at the bottom of the page to see the sponsored advert by MS?.
Does this meant that they are supporting this movement?,
Never saw one of these Virii infect my Linux box?.
Is there a link between organized Microsoft and organized crime here?
If you've been following the malware watch bulletins, you've already seen the beginning of the disable-other-malware tactic.
Being on a university network does have its priveleges--we can do what we want with it. The network does just that, it blocks off all access to any machine spewing traffic of the virus or malware sort (but mostly virus). The user gets a phone call from the ATN department saying what happened and telling them to bring their machine in to be cleaned. They bring it in, it gets cleaned, and they are allowed back on. It works pretty well, and manages to keep viruses from propagating to badly on the network.
Fortunately, other than this, the University is also pretty hands off in terms of what you do with the network. Dont cause them any trouble, and they wont cause you any.
I'm the helpdesk for a medium-sized enterprise and I look after the MIMEsweeper and Exchange boxes
Since about 3 months ago we have been receiving an infected email approximately every other second, mainly during office hours
It's mainly Netsky, or similar and the balance of versions is leaning heavily toward the new 69 and 70kb versions, meaning a lot of people are getting "upgraded" to the latest release. The timing suggests it's mainly office PCs
We're frantically telling all our group companies and contractors to virus-check, and calling-in our laptops, but it is still flooding in.
I'm starting to make a case for using Linux on every PC that doesn't require a Win32 application, as all the usual hassles of managing a linux roll-out pale into insignificance compared to the virus danger our systems are currently under.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The only real solution is an ISP-side one. The ISP says, 'If your computer is spewing out malware broadcasts, we have the obligation to kick you off the internet and then help you clean up your computer. If something happens, contact our customer care department or go to the other ISP down the street.'
Now if they would be able to say "or go to the other ISP down the street, but they'll tell you the same thing" then it could help.
To be honest, I think it's way past that. Almost every computer has some kind of spyware installed now. Every friend I recommend running ad-aware or similar finds crap, and I'm sure they'll be so foolish as to install it again. These are supposed to be computer-savvy people, I dread to think what the normal mom&pop machine looks like.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
no really... what on earth are you talking about?
Oh my god!!! "Organised" is spelt correctly!
/.
That's a first on
...at least two cases that I'm aware of, where people have successfully claimed that their machine was hacked.
I'm sure there's some ugly numbers on both false positives and false negatives out there I'd really don't want to know.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Important document enclosed".
Or: "Thanks for your payment - your invoice".
The zip shows a text file inside
Of course under Linux the extension comes out as:
invoice.txt
An exe fed with lots of new-lines.
I usually reply asking where they know me from.
And I get Mail-Delivery-Failure (unknown user).
I mean its weird because it's my private-company address and noone dares spam pr0n (are they selective?)
Anyway, I don't know why but its happening more and more often - I really think someone purposely wants to infect me
But then give I am as vile to companies as I am online (and when posting here)
I shouldn't be too surprised
About two years ago I download a shareware program from a particular website.
.exe files were infected with it.
After that, my PC acted sluggishly after I installed the program and whenever I when online.
I finally found out my PC had picked up the Klez virus and that a bunch of
After this incident, after disinfecting my PC, I took PC security very seriously!
I found the URLs below very helpful to keep my PC free of all malware:
The 'Home User Self Defense Guides' at http://www.uksecurityonline.com
(Thanks to spammers/crackers/blackhats, you have get a free account with a valid email address in order to access the Guides.)
AVG antivirus by Grisoft.
Sysclean by Trend Micro
Outpost Firewall by Agnitum.
My program CF13 keeps malware out of my PC by treating all email file attachments as 'text files'. This renders any malware in them inert and also makes it safe to scan said files for malware or otherwise handle them--even delete them.
The only way the botnets will continue to survive is through user inertia/apathy or, worse yet, trusted firewall/antivirus programs become silently compromised and used widely.
...doesn't make it untrue. An English friend e-mailed me three days ago to gloat and drool about his company's new "killer" PCs: they are Dell P4 2.6's with 512MB RAM, 60 GB HDDs, and 15" LCDs...to him these are the most amazing things ever. It broke my heart to inform him that they would be considered sub entry-level systems most everywhere else in the developed world! ;-)
I keep seeing posts about punishing the victom. Isn't that a little like slashing up a pretty girls face because she got raped?
To take it further, ya maybe it wasn't too bright for her to walk down that dark alley but she's still a victom of a crime. Ya maybe she was dressed sexy but that still doen't give someone the right to victomise her.
It's easy to blame victoms. But how can we justify causing even more harm to them when it is the criminal who comitited the act?
Our FBI and others can track these people down in a heart beat. Just read www.grc.com to see how easy it is for someone smart enough to do it.
So I think we're stuck. I believe we can and do track these people and know who they are. But to expose that fact would compromise their ability to do so.
But in the absence of putting these people away, to then turn around in frustration and cause even further harm to the victom isn't the answer either, the way I see it.
I'm noticing more and more that the current crop of law enforcement agencies are increasingly incapable of handling this sort of problem. The only way they seem to be able to handle it is if we give them free reign and throw out all of our rights.
The only thing I can see working is vigilante justice. Find out who is doing it, and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. Frame them. Do what you have to do to make this bastards either quit doing what they're doing, or get them in Legal trouble.
Yes, it's illegal, but is it wrong? If I wasn't such a coward, I'd consider it. But I have a wife with babyrage, so I must keep that in mind. Those that do not, those that are bored with their lives.... Go after a spammer, go after a Spyware maker. make their lives a living hell.
I'll cheer everytime I see you on the news.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
And people wonder why "insider trading" isn't more prosecutable.
"Your honor, I had no idea that my manager was using the intended business moves of my client to weight his other accounts. There must've been a trojan on my computer."
Yeah... It's the one the IT department installs by default so that they can make sure you're a proper company man.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Bill Gates has some nerve to charge $1000/seat to organized crime :)
-------- I dig Mobile Phones
if they're stealing computers from joe/jane ...
/.). ...
:P
average to do DoS attacks maybe the educated part
of society needs to band together
we have a distributed windows.worm sniffing project
(a few days back on
so maybe we can all participate on voluntarily
base distributed re-DoS project?
just install a client (you're number #233'212 so
far) and have the power (and freedom) to take out
those criminal bot-nets.
click here for the latest IforI.exe client.
the size large size of the program is due to the
fact that IforI.exe will only install on a clean
computer. if IforI.exe doesn't install it's
because your computer has been compromised
"IforI.exe" is brought to you by robinhoodware inc.
Yeah, so what.
I actually rented one of these networks. It was a "Portal of Doom 8" compromised, all broadband, 10,000 node net with single-point-of-command control. I was going to use it to take over all the financial institutions' traffic, slowly siphoning off billions into various Nigerian bank accounts (I would worry about how to get the money out of those accounts later). Then I would use the network to control the minds of the populace by sneaking spoofed CNN stories into their browsers accusing the politicians of the world of being one brotherhood dedicated to raping the world's resource just to impress the Olsen twins. Once the politicians understood that I held the key to their utter destruction, I would RULE THE WORLD!!!! bwuHAHAHAH!!!!
Just as I completed my "WorldDomination.scr" script, my wife maxed out our bank account shopping at Ross Dress For Less, the rent check bounced, and I was looking at "access denied."
Dang it.
I hate it when that happens....
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Oh wait ... this sorta IS a Beowulf cluster, isn't it? Never mind.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Actually, the CD they sent me will update you as of Febuary of this year, regardless of what the site says.
Thanks.
I would make a comment about your deficient spelling, but that would be mean.
I don't see how we could be considered to be technologically impaired, though. My study looks like something from NASA...