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Searching for Botnet Command & Controls
Orange Eater writes "eWeek has a story about a group of high-profile security researchers intensifying the search for the command-and-control infrastructure used to power botnets for malicious use. The idea is to open up a new reporting mechanism for ISPs and IT administrators to report botnet activity." From the article: "Operating under the theory that if you kill the head, the body will follow, a group of high-profile security researchers is ramping up efforts to find and disable the command-and-control infrastructure that powers millions of zombie drone machines, or bots, hijacked by malicious hackers."
As soon as they start tracking down the web controlled and irc controlled nets, they'll move to gnutella style distributed control systems and i2p style networks of bots. Good luck tracking one of those to it's source. Onion routing anyone?
They're there affecting their effect.
Just filter traffic looking for the string "Sarah Connor".
Are all botnet operators dumb? There's a whole heap of things botnet operators could do to insulate themselves and their networks from attack. Examples:
Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure if it was my actual job to operate a botnet I could come up with something far more sophisticated. So why don't botnet operaters do this? Are they all dumb?
As someone who has intimate knowledge about hijacking computers (i have plenty of friends from my ..er.. darker days), a lot of these botnet creators employ "features" such as port knocking and stealth commands (may appear as a simple https response) which are usually encrypted. You may be able to stop the sloppy botnets, but I can tell you now that this is not an easy problem to stop nor a friendly society to penetrate. And as a previous poster foreshadowed, a lot of them are already distributed due to the ease of shutting down a headnode. Botnet creators constantly evolve, how do you think they became so elaborate today?
It is run by this Taco guy...
He uses this website, slash something or other. All he has to do is put the url he wants attacked on its frontpage and all his loyal "bots" go right to work on a DDOS attack.
Most ingenious! And I bet he profits handsomely from it too!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When they came into fashion, botnets were mostly comprised of infected machines that got little to no updates. They existed, some bots were discovered and eventually it phased out, only to be replaced by others. The connection was made to a static IRC Server and/or channel, the commands were static, eventually they were discovered and cut off.
Then anti-virus and security companies got aware of the problem and started to counter it. The result were updating bots that reloaded part of their code, some configuration script or a completely new code from a static server. When we started to hunt down the update servers, update servers became dynamic as well.
Today, botnets have a faster and more reliable update mechanism than some commercial products. More fallback servers than most companies. And a faster response time to "blackouts" than anyone in the (legal) commercial 'net.
Another development such nets go through, right as we're talking, is that more and more of the bots get more and more features. Earlier, you had a bot that connects a spam net, another one with keylogging, another one that offers DDoS Sheep properties and so on. More and more, those features become incorporated in one bot. Instead of specialists, you get generalists.
Today you have trojans that create proxies, at the same time they harvest your passwords, especially interested in your server passwords (to turn your personal homepage server in an update box for them), log your input (especially when you're dealing with online services that require money transfer, like paypal or ebay) and use you to send sex-spam out to others.
Those sex-spam sites contain adware popups, those in turn are infected with 0day exploits like the WMF-exploit was. Those in turn contain more trojans.
This all is not necessarily done by one and the same attacker. You can buy and sell those "services". One person or group creating the adware dropper, selling its finding to another group who uses it to get a sheep onto the computer, those in turn sell them to someone who wants to conduct a DDoS attack. Or they sell it to a keylogger, who then uses this to harvest your login data to some pay services to transfer your money or buy stuff for your money.
And this business is growing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FTFA:
Here you go: One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 Phone: (425) 882-8080 Fax: (425) 706-7329.
So far, any reaction from the "good" guys of the net caused a reaction from the "bad" guys. You turn something off? Ok. Next!
Turn IRC off and they'll do it via usenet and have the bot read a certain (not too spammy) group religiously for his master's voice.
When you turn that off, they'll find another way. There are so many communication tools out there, so many protocols, from MSN to Skype, and they all can and will be abused to keep the botbrain in tough with his zombies.
Futile. The only chance is to cut the machines from the 'net that contain those trojans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The biggest problem with spam and viruses and worms is that the federal authorities, specifically those in the United States, don't seem to give a damn about going after these criminals. They don't need to pass any new laws. Computer tampering is computer tampering and the feds are either ignorant or scared, or being told to prioritize the prosecution of these cases as low priority. If you start nailing these people, things will dramatically slow down, but the real reason spam and other attacks are increasing is because enforcement hasn't gotten off its lazy ass and started to prosecute more of these criminals. The way I figure, when Wal-Mart is interrupted by some massive bot-net, then and only then will the government suddenly recognize this is a really bad thing that needs to be dealt with.