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Zombies Blend In With Regular Web Traffic
An anonymous reader writes "Hackers controlling farms of zombie computers are now trying to blend in with web traffic, News.com reports. Instead of traditional IRC controls, many zombie farms are moving to simple web-based control schemes, which makes them harder to track down." From the article: "The change in tactics makes it harder to identify zombies on a network, and it becomes tougher for security professionals to use the hackers' own tools to spy on them. In addition, the switch to Web-based control increases the threat of zombies to enterprises and other organizations, as that method can't be blocked as easily as the previous technique."
The problem with zombies has always been the centralization required to control them. For example, if the zombies are controlled via IRC and all pointed at EFnet, idling in #my31337botnet -- all it takes is an EFnet admin to close the channel. So the owners routed them to private IRC servers via their IP.. but now all it takes is the owner of the box or network hosting the server to shut it down. So the owners used dns so they could move the server if needed, but now all it takes is having the domain suspended or the dns removed. And now, if these bots are just polling a website for commands - it shouldn't be difficult to close the website. This problem resonates with just about any protocol used - be it IRC, AIM/ICQ, or a website. The problem is that there are more children creating ddos nets than there are good samaritans/PO'd network admins having them shut down. So join the botnets mailing list and donate a hour a week.
Unless the web sites get indexed by Google, and zombies use specially chosen keywords to search for their latest encrypted instructions.