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CA Warns Of Massive Botnet Attack
m4dm4n wrote to mention a story running on The Register which describes a coordinated malware attack designed to establish a massive botnet. From the article: "The attack involves three different Trojans - Glieder, Fantibag and Mitglieder - in a co-ordinated assault designed to establish a huge botnet under the control of hackers. Computer Associates reckons that access to the compromised PCs is for sale on a black market, at prices as low as five cents per PC."
Now witness the power of this fully operational botnet... :/
Welcome to Blackbeard's weapons emporium. You will see we have the finest collection of AK-47s, anti-aircraft missiles, and Airzookas. Oh, and over here we have wholesale zombie PCs.
Do I have to buy the whole network at 5 cents a PC? Or can I just buy say a dollar's worth? I wouldn't mind having 20 PC's... I can force all those PCs to join my network games of Quake and Unreal... finally I'll have people to play with... gasp... maybe even online 'friends'! Mommy will be so happy... in fact I think I'll go upstairs right now and tell her the good news!
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Maybe the SETI program should invest in some of this cheap computing power...
Glieder, Fantibag, Mitglieder?
These guys shouldn't be writing code, they should be writing Harry Potter novels.
access to the compromised PCs is for sale on a black market, at prices as low as five cents per PC.
Heck, that's five cents more per PC than SETI@Home pays me, and they won't eat me when I find them like the aliens will.
Moving to a new platform/OS without knowing all the ins and outs, could be just as dangerous as staying with Windows.
I remember my early days with Linux, back when I used to futz around and actually made my machines less secure, before I learned a great deal more about the OS and its features.
I am not saying that switching is bad, I am just saying that it is important to know what you are switching to before making the switch.
Nobody should get caught with their firewall down holding their LAN cable in their hand...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
...at five cents per computer, they do have a lower TCO after all!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I would suggest using user levels.
regular customers would get level 1 or level 0. (Web and mail access, no incoming ports, etc.)
Then it would be a customer's decision to apply for a higher level. maybe pass a test, portscan, etc. sign something that gives them responsability for the services running on their box.
They could even make higher levels cheaper, as an incentive for customers to educate themselves. like level 4's get 15% off their monthly bill.