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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."
Zombies Blend In With Regular Web Traffic
But how do you differentiate the zombies from your standard brain-dead AOL users?
I guess either way, you should just aim for the head.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"Hackers controlling farms of zombie computers are now trying to blend in with web traffic"
:) That'll look like normal web-traffic.
If you really want to blend in, send out your Zombie commands via Myspace profiles.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I guess I'm probably stating the obvious, but it seems like Google, Yahoo, and other online cost-per-click advertising portals are most vulnerable to the new type of zombie farms. I wonder if they would employ some of the vast resources (if they aren't already) in fighting this problem?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
But how do you differentiate the zombies from your standard brain-dead AOL users?
Zombies have hopes, dreams and ambitions.
Funny this story should come up today. My community website has been getting attacked for the last couple of days by a botnet (I think) of zombie computers. I wrote the Spambot Trap article that was published here in 2002, and I've been using the trap successfully to block spambots ever since. Usually, the block list is a couple of dozen repeat offenders. But day before yesterday, it suddenly spiked up - there were dozens of spambots coming in from all kinds of different IP addresses. I'm pretty sure it's a botnet of zombies, because a) they all report exactly the same User-Agent, and b) they all come in directly to the guestbooks and forums (probably using a search engine) and c) all the IP addresses resolve to dialup, cable or DSL accounts (some businesses too). It's getting a bit much, because the block list has suddenly ballooned to over 160, constantly changing. The trap is coping ok, because the blocks will fall off after a while (the block time goes up as the power of 2 for each repeated offence). I have added some logfile snapshots to the article. (Look down the page to see how the number of blocks has suddenly increased in the last couple of days, and also notice how all the browsers are identical). I think this is some kind of virus that may still be spreading, because the number is only increasing.
Anybody else seeing this kind of stuff happening?
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
Ooops, missed the "web" part. Was picturing the undead in the car next to me in the morning commute.
For that matter, with the way we all look and act in the AM, no one would recognize a real zombie if it reared up and bit you on the brain.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I for one welcome our new undead overlords?
"The Spamhaus Exploits Block List (XBL) is a realtime database of IP addresses of illegal 3rd party exploits, including open proxies (HTTP, socks, AnalogX, wingate, etc), worms/viruses with built-in spam engines, and other types of trojan-horse exploits."
If every home internet connection had a NAT router it would cut down incoming TCP80 traffic a fair amount (so long as uPNP doen't f*ck it up anyway)
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
why not use encrypted steganography, probably even harder to deal with?
Got Code?
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.
What concerns me is how many companies would respond to this. Unforuntately, the threat for IM viruses brought on a corporate IM client at a company I formerly worked for (and I enjoyed working for them immensely). While I admit it was good that you always knew how you could instant message someone within the company, they were planning on eventually blocking all other IM clients. This moved surprised me, however, as I used other IM clients to communicate with my primary contacts who were employed by our client. This was essential to me since our group focused on working for clients all over the U.S. remotely. The same could happen with web browsing should this occur, unfortunately. If they are unable to deter outbound these connections easily (which woud be the case if it were on port 80), they will likely try to filter as much as possible as a deterrent. We already know how limiting such proxying and filtering can be - it would be a real pain to have to deal with that on a regular basis.
Unless the web sites get indexed by Google, and zombies use specially chosen keywords to search for their latest encrypted instructions.
I can actually imagine the botnets and the blog spammers getting together on this. Someone blasts a bunch of nonsensical comments to various blogs, wikis, guestbooks, etc. They monitor them to see which ones get cleaned up. The ones that don't get cleaned up are designated as sources for commands. Then the spambots start posting encoded commands along with the blogspam, and the zombies start reading the blogs' comments to get instructions.
Talk about a disturbing synergy.
at 19:00 target1.sh
at 19:30 target2.sh
at 23:00 spam.sh
Move along humans, nothing to see here.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
At the end of the article: "That said, the good guys control the infrastructure, so we ultimately have the last word. If we don't like what they're doing, we can shut them down."
That's a good one, remember if i ever get life-threateningly sick, that i can always shoot myself. (that will teach those virussus/bacteria/cancercells!)
Soooo was it really that smart to post a newstory with a headline like that so close to Hollaween?
I'm guessing not - with my big juicy tasty brain dripping with brainy goodness.
Come and get it!
One failsafe is to use "user at domain. com".
/know/ this is an email address, you can parse it. But what do you look for to find this on a page? The usual identifier for emails is an @ character. For a very devious spammer, "(at)", "AT", "[at]" and such will suffice. But "at" is an English word. It will occur anywhere on a page with English text.
...
Yes, if you
The "dot" could in extreme cases be used. But if it's replaced by a period (and placed such that it fits with normal syntax, following a word and followed by a space), that too becomes unrecognizable. It's going to catch an enormous number of false positives.
The only remaining vulnerability is to search for "gmail", "yahoo" or "hotmail". I'm afraid I don't know a solution for that one, unless someone knows a way to mask domain names as well?
"Protect your email address: Write in leetspeak!"