Slashdot Mirror
20,000 Zombie PCs -- $3000
Saint Aardvark writes "From F-Secure blog comes these links to two USA Today articles on spamming. The first gives an example of how a grandmother ended up becoming a security expert after Comcast cut her connection for spamming. The second quotes spammers advertising networks of Zombie PCs for sale. The price? $3000 for 20,000 machines."
GTRacer
- Things to do
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I, for one, welcome our new security grandmother overlord. All bow to thee.
I wonder how the processing power would compare to WETA's supercomputer cluster and their pricing. It would be slower to coummunicate data among the computers and ensure data quality, but I wonder how it compares.
Heather Hall can trace the start of her online banking nightmare to the day she received what she thought was a legitimate e-mail request from Bank of America asking her to click a link to a bank Web page. The 27-year-old health services worker typed in her login, password and account number. ...
Bank of America agreed to reimburse the money stolen from Hall's account, but only after she badgered them. "They wanted me to believe it was my fault," says Hall.
Yes, it's her fault. She did something foolish.
"When I pay my water bill, I expect my water to be drinkable out of the tap. Today, when you pay your Internet bill, the data you get is not consumable."
Not without some kind of sauce or dressing. Plain 1's and 0's taste like cardboard.
Zombie victim Carty took matters into her own hands: She did research on how to clean up and protect her PC and diligently updates programs that scan her computer for various types of malicious code. Her PC now runs clean. "I had no clue at Christmas that I would become a security expert," she says.
It is quite sad that a person who just updates their computer and runs a virus scanner is now considered a "security expert."
Holy crap. That makes me a secuirty expert! Time to update the resume!
no
I didn't realize the zombies of voodoo legend were online.
I have to say, I don't understand how people get into so much trouble.
Maybe I've been lucky, but I've ran a Windows XP system for about a year now (and a Windows 98SE system for about 2 years prior under the same conditions), doing the occasional patches from Windows Update, without a virus scanner or firewall. If I do something stupid that makes me suspect that I've contracted something, I'll drop over to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ and do a quick scan. This generally only happens when I'm trying to find a crack for something on a P2P network and the bastards have embedded a keystroke logger or some other little nasty in a trojan crack package.
Otherwise, I do an occasional glance-over at the list of processes running, and if my modem is lighting up like a Christmas tree I might fire up Sygate Personal Firewall or something just to see what's happening with the traffic, but I've never seen it give me real cause for concern. I still get some port traffic for the old Code Red worms and what not, but nothing that seems to have been really problematic.
As I said, maybe I'm just lucky. Then again, maybe I don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook Express, and maybe that helps a lot. Who knows.:-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
...the ability to DoS SCO for the rest of the century...priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. For the rest, there's my Zombie Army of Evil.
adam b.
It's funny you should mention computer problems.
Whenever I view this it.slashdot.org site, everything on my screen is all washed-out.
Is this a symptom of being a zombie PC?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
A one-eyed man in the land of the blind is King.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
- a list of machines that need to be cleaned up
- a bank account or other information that can be used to track down the spammers/crackers
I guarantee $3k is cheaper than what it would actually cost tax payers if the authorities did their job with normal investigative work.Money? Lots and lots of money?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Just start monitoring for bursts of spam from their clients, and simply *pick up the phone* and *call them.* "Sir, we've detected mass spam coming from your connection. Please clean up your computer. You have one week."
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
And one wonders why users do not recieve some of they blame they rightly deserve, either.
First lady in the story - obviously had zero protection beforehand, and it took a major problem w/her connection being disconnected before she got some. If nothing else, at least it sounds like she has the concept of basic security down a little better now.
Second lady mentioned - a single call to her bank for verification would have likely saved her any trouble. I have gotten several "phishing" mails myself, and they are incredibly easy to recognize - often from a bank I have no accounts with or that never sends mail otherwise, they contain grammatical/spelling errors that would never appear in a real mail, and ask for information that the real bank would have absolutely no reason to need verified.
Third lady mentioned - more Microsoft's fault than the others, due to the security holes. Still, it sounds like she either didn't patch things, opened a nasty attachment, or otherwise brought the software on through her own action. Hard to tell since they don't mention anything by name.
So yes, Microsoft is evil. But don't fool yourself into thinking that users aren't contributing their share of problems either.
- The perpetrator (a spammer) is almost universally hated.
- Spammers do real damage.
- They are doing this damage for a pure profit motive.
- They are operating out in the open, making for an easy arrest.
So why are these bozos still in business?===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
We get Linux boxes in labs we don't manage hacked all the time. They usually aren't used for SPAM, they are instead used for warez, eggdrops or shells, but they get hacked all the same. Reason is the same too: someone fails to patch their system, and it gets exploited.
Linux needs patching as well because OSS is not immune to security holes. SSH, BIND and even PNG are three off the top of my head that have had security problems in the past. If you run a Linux box that has an SSH server, and you don't patch it when an SSH venurability comes out, someone WILL hack it.
But unless they're running with root privileges (which most distributions don't do by default) you can't overwrite system binaries or executables, or run daemons on priviledged ports (like open smtp relays on port 25), etc. I know that the attacker could do things like use nonstandard ports or privilege escalation hacks like buffer overflows, but it's extra work the attacker needs to do, making it a less attractive target (and thus, more secure by default).
I was going to root my GF's box last night..but she gets made when I refer to it as linux.
If spammers are scammers, can you really expect good value for your money?
I fully expect follow-up news stories on how someone who wanted to open a business online fell for a mass marketing scam, paying spammers thousands of dollars only to see the spammers vanish in thin air with their money.
Stupid? Well, people look at their home computers like their TV or their toaster. Is there any other consumer product that requires so much awareness to run?
Probably only the the automobile. We make people take written and practical tests before they're allowed to drive unsupervised, and then in most places they are expected to get insurance to cover any damage their operation of the car may cause.
Is that where you want to go?
Using a computer on the Internet will never be as simple and relatively safe as using a TV, but it could be moved down the scale of complexity in that direction, by better engineering of Internet software and making ISP managed reverse firewalls part of the standard broadband service.
Granny should be able to just turn on her computer to order to sell her crocheting on ebay or get email with pictures of her grandkids without having to research computer administration. And, when she's done, I think she should be able to flick a massive off switch (like on the old PC/XTs) and watch the CRT raster turn into a little dot, without having to worry that somebody is using her computer when she thinks it is idle. I for one would think that was cool.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How many who drive cars know how to fix it? I certainly don't, nor do I have any desire to learn to fix my car.
It's not the end users' fault the majority of home computers are by default magnets for virii, trojans, worms and spyware.
Certain OS manufacturer is at fault here, as well as the Dells and Gateways of the world, who insist on selling zombie networks when solutions to prevent them from occurring have been in place for quite a while.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
In the world of common users, Linux boxes are about as common as snowcones in hell, too. Macs are almost as common as snowcones in Florida...not quite.
Insightful??? No. Funny??? Yes.....
Funny thing is that the author seems to say that Macs are close to ubiquitous (snowcones seem to be likely to be common in Florida because they are a form of hot-weather refreshment) but Linux machines are nowhere.
Worldwide, Linux machines probably marginally beat Macs in the desktop space. Domestically, Macs are a bit ahead, for now....
In China, OTOH, legal copies of windows are much more rare than FreeBSD desktops in the US!!!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If the spams outgoing, you dont NEED to run anything on a privileged port, and standard user access will do. So long as the rooted system accepts mail in, even on a non standard port that you can configure your master host to connect to, then it can happily spam everyone else. The mailserver doesnt need to talk FROM port 25.
Does anyone else wonder where MessageLabs gets their statistics? I can't help but wonder at their methodology (though I suspect rectal extraction). I get daily reports on SpamAssassin and my configured DNS block lists for the servers I manage. Their spam traffic doesn't start to approach 95% of inbound messages. After eliminating all internal email from the statistics, SpamAssassin flags about 20% of incoming email as suspicious and SpamHaus blocks another 10% or so. These are not confidential, hard-to-find addresses. These are university servers where staff and faculty are required to have valid email addresses posted on the department web pages. Any spider worth a damn should have harvested them long ago. I find it very hard to believe that this environment is getting 60% less spam than systems that don't provide a directory of valid addresses.
Spam is a problem, but it's time journalists (online and otherwise) start taking stats with a grain of salt. Too many organizations are willing to publish questionable numbers in an attempt to sound like they have thoroughly researched the issue.
Or in the MessageLabs case, to sell a product that will 'solve' the problem.
One indication of the going rate for zombie PCs comes from a June 11 posting on SpecialHam.com, an electronic forum for spammers.
And you guys didn't put that link in the main Slashdot article?!?!?! Oh come on! If there's a site that deserves to be slashdotted, that one must be it.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Seems to me this is off the mark, and it typifies what is wrong with our telecom-oriented providers, as they too believe this all too often.
The provider provides a connection. He does not provide content. ISDN was a gigantic failure because telco's thought they had to provide content, rather than just a reliable connection.
If I want content, I will buy an AOL subscription. Otherwise, what I expect is not clean water but a reliable liquid movement mechanism. You don't call it a pipe for nothing. The liquid that comes out will be determined by me, not by the provider of pipes!
MW
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Oh if I had mod points, my friend, you would be more karma-ful than you are right now. I couldn't agree more. At least she did something about it, instead of sitting ignoring it, hoping it gets better, unlike the other 20,000 plus people mentioned.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.