Hunting for Botnet Command and Controls

Uky writes "Convinced that the recent upswing in virus and Trojan attacks is directly linked to the creation of botnets for nefarious purposes, a group of high-profile security researchers is fighting back, vigilante-style. The objective of the group, which operates on closed, invite-only mailing lists, is to pinpoint and ultimately disable the C&C (command-and-control) infrastructure that sends instructions to millions of zombie drone machines hijacked by malicious hackers." From the article: "Using data from IP flows passing through routers and reverse-engineering tools to peek under the hood of new Trojans, Thompson said the researchers are able to figure out how the botnet owner sends instructions to the compromised machines."

Comments

Re:Violation of My Privacy?

[Seumas]

What Amerika do you live in?!

Re:Botnet

[The Illegal Pirates]

Dear Sir or Madam:

We, the Illegal Pirates of the Internet Who Must Steal Everything No Matter What, run a vast botnet using sophisticated command and control schemes that will remain impervious to your primitive nonsense. We have thousands of servers constantly swapping vast stores of copyrighted information, and nothing can stop us. Nothing! muahahahahahahahhaha

Signed,
The Illegal Pirates of the Internet Who Must Steal Everything No Matter What

p.s. No we're not using stupid comments on slashdot as encoded messages to our botnets

Re:Violation of My Privacy?

[Red Alastor]

Encryption is virtual admission of guilt.>/i>

Decide, do you want to hide that information or you don't ? If you have nothing to hide, why does it bother you that someone could intercept your communication ?