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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."
When the security "experts" are busy looking at all the data passing through routers, who is busy ensuring that the "experts" will not violate my privacy by reading the personal but sensitive e-mail notes that I send to my friends and associates?
You, by encrypting them.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Does it come as a surprise to you that people that have access to routers can sniff your packets?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
What would be really interesting is if using a combination of honeypot PCs (to match trojans to controllers) and the commands used to control the botnets, these vigilantes could make the zombified PCs download and run a cleaning tool to rid themselves of the trojan.
C&C attacks are the staple of today's military. An organized, centralized effort should do wonders for laying waste to the economic value (and motivation) behind such behavior.
The best way to lay waste to someone's economic power in C&C is to destroy their harvesters. Make sure not to send infantry units because they'll suffer tiberium poisoning, or merely be run over by the harvester. Another great way to wreak havoc is to send the engineer into the harvesting facility as the harvester is unloading, you'll get the building, harvester and the tiberium thats being unloaded at the time. Of course, many believe engineering cheese is the cheap way to play C&C, but of course there are too many cheesy plays to count in that game. I suggest you play something like Starcraft. Or Starcraft2, which I have a chance of actually helping with.
God spoke to me.
... fighting back the internet scumbags all over the planet, vigilante style...
...
Now if they could just have a cool name, we could have a new hit superheroes movie for this summer.
Any suggestion anyone ?
- The League of Net Shadows
- The League of Extraordinay Nerds
- The Fantastic Fourty
Come on give me something better