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Return of the Web Mob
Parore writes "eWeek is running a story about the return of the web mob, highlighting all the similiarities between the online attacks and the real-world mafia. From the article: "Black hat hackers have set up e-commerce sites offering private exploits capable of evading anti-virus scanners. An e-mail advertisement intercepted by researchers contained an offer to infect computers for use in botnets at $25 per 10,000 hijacked PCs. Skilled hackers in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America are selling zero-day exploits on Internet forums where moderators even test the validity of the code against anti-virus software."
There is obviously a problem with botnets, virii, and trojans, part of the problem comes from a 'not my problem' attitude from law enforcement and ISP's.
Dozens of times when networks I maintain have been attacked I have contacted ISP's with all the information they would need to trace the user performing the attack and notify them that their machine is infected, however, the response I usually recieve is, 'it is our policy not to blah blah blah', when I have had verified hack attempts on my systems and have notified the authorities about it, I have been transfered all over the place, put on hold, transfered a little more until I completely loose interest, when I do get to report something it never gets investigated.
Until the people that can actually do something about these zombie machines and malicious users, get off their asses the problem will just keep getting bigger.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
What did anyone expect?
The problem with anti-virus software is that it is 100% reactionary. The anti-virus companies don't release updates for viruses that they haven't seen yet.
That's why I view viruses/worms as a failure of the security model of the system.
Trojans are a different matter. But even with those there are ways to mitigate the effects. If nothing else, requiring a password before installing an app will solve most of the "naked pictures of celebrity" emails. There will always be a few idiots.
Let's see, the ISPs and other "authorities" can't do anything to stop the "black hat" hackers and mafia, or even refuse to do so.
Yet at the same time ATT is channelling massive amounts of customer traffic to the NSA for examination and interpretation.
Perhaps someone needs to define Mafia=Terrorist?
Three Squirrels
Cue yet another flood of FUD press on the evil "hackers who break into private and public systems, inserting viruses and exploit them to fulfill their own ends" while completely failing to mention the good guys on Bugtraq and such who have quietly been doing their thing for years.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Most law enforcement I've worked with are great at their job.. if they can see it. Example - someone commits a crime, they can investigate and arrest. However I'd say about 1/2 of general law enforcement people do not grasp the concepts of the "virtual" world, through no fault of their own.
:)
While Opping on irc, I noted a person claiming to sell laptops at 1/2 retail cost.. new ones. I pretended interest, and got some contact info.. forwarded this on to law enforcement for his area... within a week, the detective emailed me to say they'd busted a fraud ring. It was tangible, they could deal with it
Internet crimes still deal a lot in the virtual world, and if you haven't been trained on how to.. visualize and understand it, it's a tough concept. Not everyone gets it.
As with a lot of things, the key would be training. You're probably not going to get a small town sheriff trained, however some of the larger sheriff's departments would be excellent centers for this.. keep it to county level, forward to state or federal if needed.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Wow, what a bad analgy.
Ignorance is different from negligence. And ignorance is not necessarily a negative term. It just highlights the fact that somebody does not know how stuff works in this example.
Driving 150 km/h is already doing too much, knowingly. The problem is when people drive cars they believe to be secure, driving at speed limit, while not knowing that somebody came and slowly started loosening the bolts on the wheels. Until eventually the wheels come off, the person driving the car loses control and causes a multiple vehicle collision on a highway.
Yes, blah, blah, it is the responsibility of the owner of the vehicle to check the safety of his/her vehicle. Let me ask you, do you check your lugnuts each day? How about each time you drive?
The problems of PC maintenance are highlighted especially in the young kids demographic as well as novice computer users, older computer users (mom/pop, grandma/grandpa), or people who are not technologically adept.
I expect the next line to be that such people should not use computers... Let's talk realistically intead of dreaming.
"An e-mail advertisement intercepted by researchers contained an offer to infect computers for use in botnets at $25 per 10,000 hijacked PCs"
Dear researches i would like to make you an even better offer recently my good friend the president of nigeria was killed and he had left me a huge amount of money but i need help getting it out of the country for pay the fee for all the legal paper work and transfers i will give you 20% of my 100 million inheretence
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
but you have to be careful listening to them.
Hypothesis: the mob are the buyers of botnets, not the sellers, and the sellers are in a worse negotiating position.
Hypothesis: supply of infected machines exceeds demand.
Hard to tell which is correct.
Zero-day exploit pricing is interesting too. I've seen numbers like $500 or $1000. If that reflects supply and demand then Windows machines are still pathetically vulnerable. In any event, that means that any stalker or divorce investigator could afford one.
Anyone seen an actual published survey of zero-day pricing?
I feel as though I should give the 25 dollars and have the computers run folding@home for a day.
NJ Local Music Scene
Most likely, yes. "we" aren't the ones spreading virius and unknowingly joining botnets. It's the uneducated person who went to CompUSA or Dell and bought their PC. Those people wouldn't put up with the heightened security of a secure Linux box any more than they would with a secure Windows machien. They would still fall victem to the same trojans. Some virus and worms would probably spread more slowly but overall the situation would be pretty much the same because the common computer user doesn't want to deal with everything that goes along with a locked down, secure, system.
You presume that Joe or Jane Consumer will necessarily:
a) Hear
b) Pay attention
c) Understand
d) Be able to do something
e) Do something
Color me skeptical.
3. To prevent underground organizations from creating secret exploits that might otherwise go unnoticed or unidentified.
No, this only means that when someone else finds the hole, you can check if their have been black hats using it. A few of the Black Hat groups are skilled enough to find holes, and clever enough to exploit them without telling anyone else.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Maybe I've seen too many movies, but these blackhats don't *sound* like the mob.
I'd think the mafia would build enterprise-ready e-commerce sites and then "persuade" businesses to purchase hosting from them. You know, the old protection racket.
None of this $25 a pop retail sales stuff. That's just monkey business.