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25 Percent of All Computers in a Botnet?
Beckham's_Ponytail writes to mention an Ars Technica article, with some disturbing news out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Vint Cerf, one of the 'fathers of the internet', has stated that the number of botnets online is larger than believed. So large, in fact, that he estimates that at this point one in four computers is infected with botnet software. We've discussed the rise of botnets numerous times here on Slashot, but the image of 150 million infected computers is more than a little bit sobering. With the extremely lucrative activities that can be done with botnets (such as password ripping, spamming, DDoSing), as well as reports of organized crime adopting 'cyber-terrorism' as a new line of income, is it likely that law enforcement will ever be able to curb this particular bane?
Pass a law making it illegal to connect any OS to the internet that cannot be made bot-free.
Just wait until they merge and become Skynet. Then we'll really be in trouble.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Does anyone know a utility/website for detecting and cleaning bots?
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Just install linux or other unix'es and it's solved. Start by convincing your friend to buy MS free computers. After 2 weeks of struggle to lose the old habits they will get used and thank you for it. www.len.ro
Isn't there a way to develop a virus that can spread through these compromised computers, but instead of doing the damage, it fixes the leaks? These compromised computers have some sort of back-door left open right?
How many of the botnets are Windows boxes? 99.9%, no doubt, which is a greater percent than their installed base.
95% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Luckily, this statistic is one of the few 9% of statistics which aren't made up so quickly.
If you can correctly identify zombies in a botnet, would it be unethical to break into them to kill them (erase the HD, trash the system, whatever to take it down)? Seeing as how the user doesn't care or know that his machine is not under his control why not just force them to reformat it or buy a new one? You could even have it look for others to kill before it self-destructs.
---k--
</stupid>
Skynet, the end of the world, and the world being overrun with AH-nold robots.
.....Let's hope they run Windows ME, so we have a chance of survival.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
Why not start with the ISPs? Have them start policing their own customers and shut off their connections when a compromised system is discovered, then help that poor, unconnected shmuck clean their PC so they can rejoin the world wide pr0n.
I spent two frickin' hours cleaning and protecting my sister's and niece's XP laptops over xmas. Pain in the ass, but at least they're running clean and happy now. This is after I said I'd never help them because they made the mistake of buying XP laptops instead of a Macs. What can you do? Gotta clean it, even if it's partially the cause of the problem and the people using them are not of the highest technical ilk.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
The only way they'll ever solve this one is to go to the source: Microsoft. Once that beast is no longer producing the tools criminals need, the Internet will be safe.
That would mean that 75% of computers would not be infected, ergo that 75% of users finally got the clue of protecting their system against virusses and malicious websites. Is 75% running Linux without notifying the nerds? Hey, we nerds run the minority system here! I am switching to MS Windows right now.
(Another statistics victim)
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
maybe this might be possible.
More likely is a statistic that said more than 25 percent of all IP addresses have at least one CPU behind them which is part of a botnet.
That might be true.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would be much more inclined to believe that 1 in 4 PC's are infected with one or more of the following:
- Virus
- Trojan
- Worm
- Spyware
- Adware
A few of the above are used almost interchangeable (by some people) and have the capability of effectively making the machine into some form of a bot or zombie (remotely controlled or not). Now, to say that 1 in 4 machines are bots I would have to whole heartedly disagree with. This just isn't very likely. Especially since the lifetime of a specific botnet has gradually been decreasing. Faster AV responses, increased patching, and more bot competition will inherently decrease these odds. Sorry but the daddy of the internet or not.. I think he's off the mark.
in fact, you've already been assimilated!
So far there hasn't been any will to go after botnet operators. A few small time, unorganized crooks, who've been too stupid to cover their tracks properly, have been caught and convicted, but nobody is even thinking of going after the big fish operating from Russia.
In the "good old days" this problem would've been fixed in 10 seconds by cutting all of Eastern Europe off the net completely. Too bad it can't be done any more.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I had my mother who was literally computer illiterate using xubuntu for a while but one of the sites she relied on used flash 9. Sure it's easy to say screw that site for using something that wasn't available for linux up until a few days ago but this particular site was about 90% of her online activity.
So I gave her a laptop that had WinXP preloaded. I've educated her on the pitfalls of windows but keep in mind this is a person who has never used a computer. Email and surfing the web are completely new concepts for her.
I check it out every time I'm over to make sure it's clean but I fear it's only a matter of time when she misclicks something.
Now that flash 9 has come out for linux I had considered switching her back but I'm not sure how willing she'd be to make another switch. She surely wouldn't understand why she needed to switch.
If a homeowner doesn't care that there's a cannon set up on their lawn spraying shit over their neighbors; would it be unethical to destroy their house? I don't think it would but it would still be illegal.
My job has me traveling the country to troubleshoot and train on our company software. Considering almost 50% have both Google AND Yahoo toolbars installed... somehow I'm not surprised. Most don't even know how to use the toolbars at all.
* Making waffles just so I have something to Twitter *
With 99.9% of South Koreans "shackled" to Windows and "sitting behind fat pipes", why are we surprised?
.kr. It wouldn't surprise me at all if 99.5% of them were infected over there.
I keep banning new IP ranges originating from
Accountability !!! ..... right ??!?!
If I leave my car unattended with all doors opened, engine running in front of a bank. If this bank gets robbed, and my car is used by the robber as a getaway car, I'm accountable in front of a judge
Why not the same with computers left unprotected and unattended ?
I wonder how up-to-date Law Enforcement is on Cybercrime, i.e. crimes that are perpetrated in Cyberspace. There's just so many things that place them at a disadvantage. First, there's often the argument that no crime has even been committed. The 'net is a wild and crazy place, and if you're on it, there's personal responsibility for protecting yourself against the constant background of malware. Most people haven't been educated in this respect.
Second, IP forensics is a rather arcane art. Few are schooled, even fewer are of the calibre that Law Enforcement would need on their side. I'd guess that it's still more lucrative to be on the wrong side of the law, and given the nebulous nature of many of these crimes, there's just not much attraction to being a computer cop. There is a process, if you're interested, to become an expert witness in this field. That's a step in the right direction, but it's only part of the overall legal process. We still need Law Enforcement officials who are willing to press charges and a judge who's willing to sign required warrants.
Finally, there's the anonymity factor. Even IP forensics won't get your man. It'll get you their IP address, but it's a long way from the IP address to the culprit. There's dozens of arguments which could explain why your Internet connection has been implicated in a Cybercrime, most of them raising reasonable doubt.
It's possible, however. "Where there's a will, there's a way." We have to take these crimes out of Cyberspace, and start correlating information between network and reality. After all, there's generally financial transactions associated with large spam deliveries and 10k+ botnet DDoSing. It's a lot harder to claim that you're a victim of circumstance when not only was your IP spotted crawling through an ISPs subnet in suspicious ways, but you also received a few grand just before a mysterious DDoS that brought down a major website.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
I've got 4 computers in my house... now I've got to figure out which one of them in part of a botnet!
There could definitely be a class action lawsuit at some point facing Microsoft. That one company has a mass deployment of an operating system that is obviously dreadfully vulnerable to infection. Some might reasonably argue that Microsoft has an implied duty to provide a reliable operating system, as the backbone infrastructure of the modern computing world.
Among the victims of the easily infectable Windows platform are:
1) Large internet service providers, who suffer tremendous bandwidth costs due to DDoS attacks and spam
2) Sites that have been forced offline or had skyrocketing costs due to DDoS attacks
3) Businesses which suffer downtime due to networks congested with worm activity
I think it is time for an ambitious group of lawyers to start barking up this tree. It wouldn't be so big a concern if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft has made a specific effort to rollout their operating system as a foundation of the world's business computing. They are providing faulty infrastructure.
I was going to post something about imagining a Beowulf cluster of these or of welcoming our new botnet overlords, but the bot on my computer started threateNO CARRIER
Try to be more constructive you sanctimonious asshole (parent AC).
Like the ramen worm that effected most Redhat systems and then disabled the exploits it used? http://news.com.com/2009-1001-251311.html
This space is not for rent.
I've seen this reported several times in the past few days. But nowhere have I seen any kind of explanation as to how he arrived at this number. Frankly, I find it unswallowable without some fairly convincing evidence. Maybe he has such evidence (I sure hope so), but if so, where is it?
You want to cure it? Have ICAAN come up with a set of standard, simple guidelines. Not censorship, just simple things like "No sending out spam emails", "No Zombie Bot". Then have ICAAN rule that failure to pass laws enforcing these guidelines (individual countries get to decide what the actual law would be) or failure to cooperate to enforce them results in disconnect for that country from the rest of the internet. That would be ICAAN's sole enforement power
Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.
I predict one year of nastyness, during which all countries scramble to create and enforce real laws.
The worst of the worst of the offending countries, might split off and form a secondary, 'dangerous' internet. But who would care.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is not the sort of issue I'd trust law enforcement to know how to deal with. This is a technical problem, and a technical, not social, solution is what is needed.
There are a variety of solutions available to us, actually:
1) Mac OS X - good for home users and multimedia creators/editors
2) OpenBSD - basically the most secure OS around
3) Linux - distributions like Ubuntu offer a great general-purpose desktop system
4) Solaris - more often used on servers, but also makes a great workstation OS
5) FreeBSD - a mix of the above: quality, usability, reliability, efficiency, security
The one thing people will point out as missing is a system for gaming. That's where Mac OS X comes in. As it becomes more popular, more game developers will realize that it's just the sort of system they wish to target. The fairly uniform hardware means it's a lot more like a typical console system, and thus far easier to develop for. Furthermore, Cocoa offers great multimedia features not found in other systems. It's essentially everything they could ask for.
POC
Go to tech store.
Buy Windows machine
Plug it into high-speed internet
Connect to internet
Leave machine running for some time
Check to see if it 0WN3D or zobmified
he he he
post back to slashdot
make a blog of it
get it sloshedated
profit
While XP on back really can not be secured (at least that is what is claimed by BG and all of the top ppl of MS), Vista is re-designed with no known major design issues. So it can be connected. Of course, the reality is CAN anybody prove that any OS is guaranteed to be bot-free? Nope. Nada. nyet. Nein. It is mathematically impossible to guarantee that.
The real rub is that if your PC is infected with a halfway decent bot you'll never know it unless you monitor the outbound traffic.
A good bot will install a root kit that will disable and/or lie to anti-virus software.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
it says 1 in 4 are infected. But lets drill down. First take out all the mac and linux and Unix computers since the botnet rate, while not zero, is probably not signiciant. We can also exlcude most but not all embedded system. Since mac and linux and Unix , and embedded systems acocunt for more than a quarter of the market this means that most Windows computers are infected at a rate closer to 1 in 3.
Next remove all the server clusters and the majority of computers in highly active IT bussiness envirmonments. We can probably exclude most military computers. That takes out another quarter of the machines.
So basically your personal computer at home or poorly maintained bussiness machines are carrying the bulk of the infection and it's not entirely way off to say the botnet rate is 1 in 2 for windows.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'd say the real number is closer to 50%. Lot's of Bots out there that make an effort not to be noticed and just bog down the system. I hear from countless Windows users how slow their boxes are. I'd say it's a sure guess that at least 60% of those are compromised.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You're right. The only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit.
I blame the ISPs for allowing traffic to leave their networks with spoofed IP addresses. That is - passing IP packets that are sourced within thier network with IP addresses that are not within their network.
Botnets spoof IP addresses to make if harder to track down the bots. But the IPS know where the bots are and could kill them, or filter them, if they had the testicles to do it. By pass the spoofed IP addressed traffic they make it harder for the rest of the world to filter the bots.
Botnets would be a heck of a lot easier to filter, and choke, if valid IP addresses were forced on all traffic.
Insurance rates on teenage drivers are higher. We don't say all cars must be accident free but we recognize group risks are higher for some identifiable groups. insurance rates are higher if you own a race car.
ISP connection fees should be regulated so that if you own a windows computer you are treated as astonomically more likely to poison the internet than if you don't.
Note I'm not saying that because that windows machines pay more because there are more windows botnets. That would not be fair since there are more windows machines out there so naturally they have more instances of botnets. The second thing is that windows Bot's hurt other windows users more than they hurt the rest of us. So they cant be penalized for that either.
What I am saying is that
1) per captita windows machines have more bots than other systems
2) that bots don't just hurt windows user but do affect others.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I wonder how they got that 150M number--if it's the number of Bots out there or the number of infected PCs? If it's the former, and I suspect it is, you can't equate that to the number of PCs. One PC can be a member of several botnets. From what I've seen (and most of you have probably too), a PC either seems to be clean or has 14 bots and 95 pieces of spyware on it depending on the user's habits and training.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
After getting feedback that the majority of their users have Spyware installed on their systems, Microsoft decided to incorporate spyware directly into the OS (embrace and extend). With the release of Microsoft Vista, your computer will come with software that runs silently in the background, regularly checks in with their network, and can be completely disabled remotely, similar to botnet software produced by others.
While this system is not pre-configured to send spam or generate DDOS attacks like many other botnets, it does have the ability to download new functionality in the background through Windows Update, so this capability could be added at a later date if enough customers continue to install third party botnets. This means that while your Vista computer is already part of a botnet out of the box, it's fairly dormant. As an indication of the omnionous potential of this enhanced system, Microsoft is calling it 'Windows Activation'.
XeoMage
Actually, you have not taken this analysis far enough. Next you must remove all computers owned by cats, as cats are fastidious animals, and as natural hunters quite concerned with security. My research says 10% of all windows computers are owned by cats.
Next, you can't count windows computers that have been smashed with sledgehammers. If you can't figure out why, I pity you. My research says that 17.54979% of all windows computers have been smashed with sledgehammers.
Also, it would be ridiculous to count computers that have been taken over by Skynet. Technically, they ARE part of a botnet, but this is really a seperate, and very real, very important issue. Here, my research indicates over 1/4 of all windows computers are now part of skynet, so we have to count those out.
As everyone knows, there are a significant number of aliens present on the planet, and a significant number of them are silicon based life forms posing as high end windows computers while they persue research for their doctoral dissertations on the common homo-sapien couch potato. This amounts to about 22% of windows computers.
We can therefore conclude that, if I've done my math right, 2 out of every 1 windows computer is part of a botnet!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Let's say I sit down at a computer and I want to find out if it is being used as a botnet.
What is the best way to go about? monitor ports? is there a piece of software that can detect it for me? Perfeable something I can run anytime, but not have it loaded when I am not running it. I.E. not like antivirus software.
Ideally something whose utput isn't intemidating to a user that may need to read the resule back to me. I'm thinking family computers here.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Judging by some blogs I've seen, I suspect you're right.
The nice thing about the internet is no one knows you're a dog.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Hell, half of my co-workers are linux fanboys who run mail servers on their broadband connections, say things like "I don't trust anyone to route my mail for me, not even my ISP" while complaining about spam and botnets.
Thank god I only have 3 computers then.
My computer is currently running really well and although I don't have any problems when I hear stats like 1/4 computers is part of a Bot Net it makes me wonder. Is there anyway to find out if my computer is part of a botnet?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
A phenomenon enabled by and contained within the MS ghetto. So why doesn't the summary mention it in big flashing letters? This is part of the Windows experience!
you had me at #!
Big organizations always seem to have a "wait and see & let someone else fix it attitude", after all, the VPs are always traveling around incessently attending conferences, mostly on the other side of the country or on an island outside the U.S.
Big $s means there will be a lot of "retirement" suggestions being quietly made over coffee prior to the ICANN meetings designed to keep the status quo.
If I have a swimming pool in my back yard, and I leave the gate open, and a neighborhood kid comes in uninvited for a swim, and drowns, I am liable. It's called an "attractive nuisance". IANAL, and I don't know if I am criminally liable (that is, whether I can go to prison for it). But the kid's family can definitely sue me, big time.
On the other hand, if I leave the gate closed and locked, and he climbs the fence, then I'm not in trouble, even if he drowns, because I took reasonable steps to protect it, and he bypassed them.
So: If I put a PC on the net, and it gets 0wn3d, should whether I am liable or not depend on whether I had it patched, firewalled, and armed with virus protection?
Linux/Unix users, even the ones who use Ubuntu, don't just install anything. Popularity has nothing to do with it. Linux software is simply cleaner and handled more carefully.
...millions of Windows systems suffer from Virus Infections, Spyware, Trojans and Adware.
I, for one, welcome our new botnet overlords!
My spirit takes a journey through my mind...
"It's easy enough to add it to their .profile or .shellrc, so it runs every time they log in, right?"
Ya really easy I'm sure, unless you use CHMOD to make those files read only for the user. Then the malware would have to guess the root/admin password.
Granted that GNU/Linux is not invulnerable, but it sure is a lot easier than Windows to lock down, and I'd argue that its design as a whole works for, instead of against, security in general.
"Finally, there's the anonymity factor. Even IP forensics won't get your man. It'll get you their IP address, but it's a long way from the IP address to the culprit. There's dozens of arguments which could explain why your Internet connection has been implicated in a Cybercrime, most of them raising reasonable doubt."
That reminds me. I have some MPAA/RIAA/Usenet/FTP content to download.
"It's possible, however. "Where there's a will, there's a way." We have to take these crimes out of Cyberspace, and start correlating information between network and reality. After all, there's generally financial transactions associated with large spam deliveries and 10k+ botnet DDoSing. It's a lot harder to claim that you're a victim of circumstance when not only was your IP spotted crawling through an ISPs subnet in suspicious ways, but you also received a few grand just before a mysterious DDoS that brought down a major website."
Another word for arm's race.
Imagine the surprise of an unexpecting user when the first reboot message appears:
"Windows is going for a reboot to fix itself, please wait."
I blame the ISPs for allowing traffic to leave their networks with spoofed IP addresses.
All ISPs should be diligent in applying reverse-path filtering (anti-spoofing) at their edges, no argument. Actually, most of them--especially the ones who matter--already are.
Botnets spoof IP addresses to make if harder to track down the bots.
Botnets have little motive to spoof IPs anymore, for several reasons. First, most ISPs *do* take anti-spoofing measures these days. Combine that with the sheer number of bot-infected hosts--as referenced in TFA--and there's really no benefit to botnet operators to spoof addresses anymore. So, in fact, they don't.
But the IPS know where the bots are and could kill them, or filter them, if they had the testicles to do it. By pass the spoofed IP addressed traffic they make it harder for the rest of the world to filter the bots.
Again, spoofing is not the problem you think it is, and likely only a very small factor in the overall botnet problem.
Making the decision to monitor, do deep inspection and block a customer's traffic is not as simple as, "Do we have the cojones?" Do you really think it's your ISP's place to decide what traffic you want or not? What if they decide your favorite P2P traffic is bot traffic and block it?
Botnets would be a heck of a lot easier to filter, and choke, if valid IP addresses were forced on all traffic.
The real question is why do you want to blame the network (provider) for a host security problem? Should hosts not be hardened against bot infections? Shifting the blame to the network also shifts the cost of the solution, and that's hardly right either.
What the GP poster said is in fact a valid way to avoid becoming part of the problem. The time to worry about being too sanctimonious or too much of an asshole is when the stakes are low, as in minor annoyances. In this case, you are talking about botnets which are a major source of all spam, plenty of identity theft, DDoS attacks that cost real money, and a source of income for organized crime. Your petty concern about not "offending" someone is quite silly in light of these facts. Put another way, fucking get over yourself and quit comforting people who can't prevent their own incompetence from adversely affecting others.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Actually, all ISPs need to do is get the cajones to actually enforce their terms of service and acceptable use policies, and kick zombies off their networks and not let 'em back online until they're cleaned, especially if the rightful owners won't do what's necessary to keep their own computer theirs. A simple analysis of traffic patterns and logs of routing attempts on commonly exploited ports reveals who's likely zombied, and a simple phone call clears up whether it's legitimate use or botted use.
ISPs also need to make themselves accessable to other ISPs so that evidence of botnet and spam zombie behavior can be shared and acted upon. Unfortunately, the only ISPs who do this well are the little mom-and-pop shops who seriously don't take kindly to hosting zombied computers.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
I am not a professional sys-admin, but I run anti-spyware and anti-adware programs regularly (weekly) and have anti-virus sofware (AVG) running on my computers . I got firewalls (hardware and software) and keep my machines patched. I use firefox rather then explorer and use web-based gmail instead of outlook.
Am I still in obvious danger of being infected by bots? How would I find out if any of my machines is infected? All the precautions I take seemed reasonable enough a few years back. How do I continue safe internetting?
Any practical advise would be welcome.
This is actually a kinda serious question. Zombification can occur through social engineering attacks on even the most secure system (it's that damn biological IO unit that's the weak point.)
Can anyone cite successful attacks on Macs turning them into Bots? (I'd feel much more comfortable defending my own machines if I knew of what has happened to others...)
dave
till the Christian Coalition and FCC get involved...
Botnets spread because people exploit known weaknesses to take over computers. Since the weaknesses are known why don't we use worms and the like to spread patches? Take advantage of the same weaknesses to take over the computer for the purpose of protecting it. Net Vigilantes. Script Kiddies, consider using your skills to fight crime instead.
I have four computer, but non of them shows bot-net activity!
The immature dolts who post those must be out getting drunk or something.
;-)
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So here goes:
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
- to disconnect any equipment that interferes with the PSTN.
- to have your dog killed if it is rabid.
- to clean up a toxic chemical spill on your property.
- to take the medication that keeps you from spreading tuberculosis.
- to either fix any interference caused by your ham radio, or stop using the thing.
So, just how complicated is the solution to botnets and similar public network security issues?Caller: "YOU SHUT OFF MY CONNECTION! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKERS DOING?"
Rep: "Sir, your system is compromised; you need to follow the instructions on the site that your browser is automaticly connected to at launch..."
customer "All I do is check the stocks and my kid plays (insert MMORPG-of-the-minute here)...we don't do that illegal stuff, we CANT BE infected...Norton said so!"
Lets assume for the same of making things a bit more interesting, that the caller is right, they are not infected...what else could cause this?
Thats right, OPEN WI-FI!!!!
lets say that the dipshit college kid downstairs is connecting to your wifi, but you are no expert, you dont know a mac address from a zip code...and WPA...forget about it! The cable co in this case would have assumed the responsibility of ensuring a safe WI-FI setup was put in place...and I promise that the people with the skill and patience to walk someone with NO CLUE through a router config isnt going to do it on a CSR or even a L1-2 tech salary
The "cut them off" idea sounds great until you study the logistical aspects of it.
Stop prostitution by jailing clients
Stop drugs by jailing users
Stop botnets by jailing bot owners
If the stigma associated with having a botfly crawl out of ones skull would attach to botnet infected computers, the problem would go away in a matter of hours.
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
This is a Microsoft problem. O'l Billy Bob has to fix the fscking mess he made.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I work for a company that relies on these 25% of retarded computer users for revenue. So long as their computers continue to recruit more retards, I could care less. If anyone grows a brain and causes me pain then I will be forced to find them and unplug their computers. Does anyone buy this "father" of the Internet story anyway?
To draw the conclusion that Windows is bot friendly and Linux is bot-hostile is bad stats because there are other factors that come into the equation.
To set up and run Linux requires a degree of net-savvyness beyond wahat default WIndows requires. Thus installations running Linux are likely to be run by better informed people who are bot-aware and take precautions. I run Linux at home and am pretty sure I don't have any bots. I also power down everything when not in use too. However, at work we run Windows hosts. The IT guys have very tight security and I would expect that they have zero bots either.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This in no way applies to any Mac, Linux, Unix, or other machines. Botnets are, at this point, unique to windows! Make sure everyone knows it!
Reality has a liberal bias
What would it take to do something about the problem with
insecure by default OS'es (i am not naming names here on purpose,
misconfigured OpenBSD can be even insecure as default Windows Me)
Maybe a bot that infects 80% of all vurnable PC's and deletes
all documents it can find on a certain date. Screws up your harddrive
makes all your data CC numbers , all your private porn pictures
and every nasty little detail it can smut you with to a public
webpage.
Then maybe a public revolt will lead developers to make secure
by default products.
what do you guys think?
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
Ya really easy I'm sure, unless you use CHMOD to make those files read only for the user. Then the malware would have to guess the root/admin password.
Or just read the file in, delete it and write it out again. Delete permission on files is governed by the directory they're in; as long as you have write and execute on the containing directory, you can delete the file and recreate it. No need to guess anyone's password.
Try it for yourself - open a read-only file in your home directory with vi, modify it, and try to save it. Vi will tell you that it's read-only, and to use "w!" to override. If you do, vi simply deletes the file and writes out the modified version.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"To solve a problem, you have to go to the source"
So you have no problem with what the RIAA/MPAA is doing then?
The sooner the better. All the Joe Users out there who take no time to make sure their computers are safe will need to held accountable. A lot of people are losing a LOT of money because of this. Eventually the big money people are going to successfully lobby to make it so.
When Gates/Ballmer find their customers getting fined or worse (better) then we'll start to see results.
"Why not start with the ISPs? Have them start policing their own customers and shut off their connections when a compromised system is discovered, then help that poor, unconnected shmuck clean their PC so they can rejoin the world wide pr0n."
And since we're now policing. We'll also shut down all those "unlimited" bandwith hogs too.
Just make it a capital offense for writing exploits. A few public beheadings should do the trick.
With all of the windoz machine and Aohell it got to be higher
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
When, when, when are the Internet authorities going to change the way email is done? It is impossible to educate everyone to be a model citizen. The ONLY way to stop this is to change how email is sent and delivered. It must be encrypted with a sender ID for example.
When are people going to face up to the elephant in the room???
See, people (even me) will most often remain anonymous and unaccountable to anyone if we are permitted to do that!
"as long as you have write and execute on the containing directory"
Then take it off.
If only Windows could be made more secure with simple change of a file and directory permission.
How long till someone uses this troubling activity for good? How long till we see a SETI.bot or FOLDING.bot virus out there that invades your computer, and works in your free time to search for aliens or cure disease.
Distributed_Computing.bot AKA "Distributed Computing for Dummies (the REALLY easy install)"
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Thanks to advances in linux installers and autodetection, certain distributions (like Ubuntu) can be as easy to install as windows.
I use ALTIMIT OS. Yeah, I know the market share is small, but we'll never get pwn3d. Windows is so full of holes they ought to outlaw it.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Get a console, you know, the appliance designed for games, or actually grow up and realise that videogames are not even close to the most important thing in the world. That's what I would tell them (and have actually) Pick another more useful hobby or sport. Instead of a racing game, why not get into some sort of cheap stock car racing or rallying? Build your own electric car, anything. Restore old Beetles..something. Go for a bike ride, whatever. Get a scooter that can putt two up, chicks dig it, you know those funny looking people that don't look or sound or smell much like dudes? Those things? Fun to be with some times...
Instead of first person shooters, why not paintball with your buddies or a real shotgun and a round of sporting clays? Instead of video golf, hit the driving range or the links.
And etc. Get some exercise and fresh air and step away from the keyboard more often. It's a very nice world out there in meatspace, go enjoy it. Your life is what you make of it, stay stuck *addicted* to games and that is what you become, a shadow person, where the virtual world becomes more important than the real world.
That's actually fairly nuts to get that addicted to crap on a screen where you base important things around whether or not it would interfere with your "gaming".
Vegas and the advertising weasels have names for folks like that, they are called "suckers".
Or at least require ISPs to provide minimal security training to their broadband customers. As has been said: Most infection is self inflicted through ignorance. Some people might welcome the chance to learn. I know I did not want to scuba dive without some training. A lot of parents would be motivated to learn about filtering software etc. A license should be grandfathered in of course. This problem will worsen in direct proportion to bandwidth. And certainly there should be citizens' band speeds. (TBD)
People might grumble, but if it is sold as a community responsibility a license track might fly. Most (well, many) people are motivated by a sense of community responsibility. I had a young friend whose computer was a viral soup. Infected beyond redemption. Ruined. I reinstalled Windows for her, which cleaned up the mess, but she was resistant to the idea of anti-virus software because she claimed she did not do anything serious with the computer and did not want to hassle. Her current mess had taken years to build. And, she asked, couldn't she just redo the box again when it tanked? But I pointed out to her that it wasn't just her that suffered, it was the whole community that suffered when she left her computer vulnerable. (I explained a little about bots) The idea that she could be hurting others through inaction really upset her (she had never thought it through) and so we were downloading Zonealarm, AVG and AdAware in no time. In the end she bought a subscription to a suite. McAfee I think.
Before anyone starts screaming about rights and freedoms being taken away, please think about this: A license is a way that a civil society makes its members accountable, from food vendors to electricians. I am less free because of all the bots out there. If people can't get on the highway without demonstrating some knowledge, Why should they get on the information highway in a state of ignorance, especially now that we are banking and shopping there?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
No, this isn't a technical problem. Exploits are written by people.
Microsoft seems to have lost a lot of market share in the computers to Linux and Mac, only 25% of computers running Windows anymore?
I know this will get modded flame by some fanboy, but it's funny, laugh.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
'there is danger in what is writ for what is clearly humor to some will be taken as truth by the one in a position to determine the fate of the universe'
why Vulcans threw out humor with the afterbirth
You should install a bot on one of your machines, to protect the other three...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
it's only a matter of time until the cost/benefit of launching a reasonably successful large-scale attack against the OS arrives.
It's only a matter of time before some descendent of pigs evolve wings too.
You have to make decisions based on what you see and know, not speculation. Right now, and for the forseeable future, your best protection from trojans, worms and spyware is to install or purchase any OS besides Windoze.
It's not just a solution, it's the solution. A diverse population of computers will make botnets both expensive and small.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Like the ramen worm that effected most Redhat systems and then disabled the exploits it used?
Thanks for the link, it's a great example of how free software rocks. Six years ago, Ramen ate through a few poorly maintained Red Hat 6.0 and 7.0 servers running WUFTP. It did not eat through Debian, Mandrake and other distributions because there are lots of ftp servers to chose from. It has not been heard from since. A diversity of software limits the damage any one flaw can cause. Automated update tools insure the problems are fixed quickly. If something goes wrong, the user can download and burn a CD with all new software and then install it without loss of user data.
The Windoze user, on the other hand, is left with their ageing "original" CD to put all the flawed software back with tremendous hassle and loss. That's the problem with non free software - you depend on a single "owner" that can't possibly keep up for everything.
The only short term solution for the user is to leave Windoze. The only long term solution for the internet as a whole is to diversify. The two things are the same.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
FYI in case anyone needs to know and can't find it. It is available for a bunch of OS flavors. Highly recommended.
http://www.wireshark.org/If you can tell me what the "safe" 75% do that the broken 25% did not do, I'll believe only 25% are owned. It's not the users, it's not the Windoze version, it's not the network, it's not the anti-virus software, it's more like random chance. Dismissed as "harmless" at the time, worms have made it all the way into automated teller machines that never see the internet. Vista is already busted and the anti-virus industry has obviously failed. If the botnet population is only 25% today, it will quickly become 100% because there is no way to hide from one in every four computers.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wonder how many of those bots are Microsoft Operating Systems...
I'm just asking...
you know a bot that kills bots
What about "Windows malicious software removal"?
Surely these botnets should be dying in their millions every Patch Tuesday....
What happened to that?
No sig today...
I thought Microsoft was dumping Windows Malicious software removal into every PC connected to the 'net.
Why isn't this wiping out the botnets by the million?
No sig today...
Microsoft could be wiping out these botnets via Windows update, but it doesn't seem to be doing so.
Why not?
No sig today...
Davos is not exactly a forum where I would expect to here of such things. How do we know that the actual purpose of this claim is other than to stir up fear to justify massive governmental crackdowns on the Internet? Certainly the referenced article gives not one shred of supporting evidence. If kiddie porn and spam doesn't do it then let's find some other excuse by all means. Why should any of us take this figure seriously without considerable evidence? Some of us who are well aware that it isn't that easy to coordinate even a small network out in the open. To network many millions of computers in secret successfully implies all the really good hackers wear black hats. I don't buy it. Look for the effects. As who or what may benefit.
Do they really want front page CNN news, "Botnet on AOl computers caused nuclear meltdown and 20000 people dead?"
Those managers should be fired, the CEO should be smart, not a meetings attender to decide more profit ideas like a cocaine drug lord.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Here's what Cerf said: and that 150 million of them might be participants in a botnet -- nearly all of them unwilling.
Here's what Slashdot said Cerf said: he estimates that at this point one in four computers is infected with botnet software.
Hyping the hype. To what end, s.d.?
But not in anyway an answer to what was asked. In fact, it's not even a guarantee of avoiding the problem either. It's about as useful as turning up at a car accident with a lecture on proper lane etiquette. It's just your opinion, possibly of no relevance to the circumstances, of zero help at the time, and will not stop car accidents happening.
Your petty concern about not "offending" someone is quite silly in light of these facts.
When did we start "quoting" people with things they didn't say? Wouldn't be building yourself a strawman there, would you?
IP is unreliable and insecure by design. If people want security and quality-of-service guarantees, they should use another network technology. What else is new?
Is it likely that other OS's, as they gain marketshare, will be higher-profile (though more difficult) targets? Maybe. Is it a possibility? ... running my user accounts as non-admin, backing up and running Clam A/V are all pretty painless on OS X, and easily worth the effort to set up.
What you know makes your possible scenerio rather unlikely. Free software runs most of the world's web servers, where the best bandwith is, so it's already a big but hard target.
Taking further steps for yourself is still prudent. You want to make backups to ward off hardware failure and your own mistakes, even if your computer never touched an internet connected network. Running anti-virus software is mostly a waste of cycles that negates one of the primary benefits of using a free platform. It might be a nice thing to run on a mail server but non M$ desktops don't need it now. Free software distributions already force a non root user and other reasonable steps will continue to be taken. You can take it for granted that a distribution like Debian uses reasonable defaults and their administration guide is full of good advice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And Blaster didn't infect all the machines that were patched a month before it was released. Your point is valid but hardly some sort of mystical advantage for Linux.
You are right, there's nothing mystical about it.
Thanks for reminding me of the famous Blaster worm, which clearly demonstrates the fragility of non free software and it's adverse effects on the internet and commerce in general. While a patch may have been available, it was not widely deployed because it broke other non free services and programs. Blaster infected computers on Microsoft's own campus and variants remain a menace to this day because people continue to run software from their "original" CD when Windoze goes tits up and must be reinstalled. Businesses that use Windoze were particularly harmed, often having to do without their networks for a week. The infrastructure of the internet itself was overwhelmed by the traffic it generated, so everyone suffered.
Blaster was just one of many demonstrations. The same flaws are what the botnet operators use to build their networks today. The continued existence of those flaws is why one in four internet connected computers is now part of a botnet. The binary Microsoft monoculture simply sucks.
The Ramen story, is the antithesis of all of the above. Despite the high prominence of the hosts, on a small percentage was ever compromised and today the problem has vanished. Virtually no one would be running free software from 2003 unpatched, let alone free software from 2000 or before.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If improper lane etiquette (such as changing lanes without bothering to check for the presence of another vehicle already in the lane) is what caused the accident, then it would not be an unreasonable assumption that the driver at-fault does not understand this subject. Lane etiqutte would fall under driver training, and increased driver training can indeed prevent accidents (they call them defensive-driver classes, and many insurance companies will give discounts for drivers who have completed these courses).
And offending was put into quotes because I am in the USA, and as such I have seen that word repeatedly used to describe silliness that any adult should be able to handle without crying about it. I put the word into quotes because I strongly disagree that anything someone says can ever hurt you unless you choose to give them that power, but the way the word is typically used suggests a victim mentality that your emotions are at the mercy of what other people think. It is precisely that view that I was arguing against, and as such I placed the words in quotes because that is its common usage, even if I consider that usage to be invalid. The parent post was readily available for all to see, so if I were attempting to intend that to be a direct quote, this would obviously fail. Methinks you just didn't like what I said and are clutching at straws yourself to try and portray it in a negative fashion (this is made more obvious by your failure to address my main point about not allowing the incompetence of users to harm others; instead you you want to nit-pick semantics). But considering that the previous poster was complaining about being a sanctimonious asshole, which is something that could not directly harm anything but could hurt someone's feelings if they choose to give random strangers the power to do that, then yes "offensive" was correctly used.
Any other useless concerns? Did I also fail to use a punctuation mark, or did I use a relative pronoun in the subjective case when it should have been the objective case? Or are you ready to quit worrying about stupid shit and just admit that you are unable to disagree with what someone said without automatically assuming that they must be dishonest in some way?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
Hey, that would be a reasonable analogy if God created exploits.
I am rather pleased and a little surprised that this idea received a little positive feedback.
My thought was more that a person, not a computer, would get the license. Once the person demonstrated that he or she had the knowledge to operate the box responsibly then they could connect at high speed and run whatever hardware or software configuration they wanted. And since *nix systems don't currently need a lot of security cruft then running them would be fine. The licensing body is simply trying to get at least one security-aware person per broadband connection. As with an auto license you could drive whatever car you want. Not everyone using the machine(s) would have to get the license. The assumption would be that the licensed maintainer would work with the other users to keep from getting pwned. Perhaps there might be consequences for the licensee if he let the side down and became a zombie happy meal.
This is distinct from an annual auto inspection, which is more what Cisco Kid seemed to be talking about. (Also an approach to this problem) But I would not like anyone looking at my config and telling me I need to upgrade my AV package. Or run one when I don't need one. I don't much like car inspections either. But the idea I had concerning a broadband license would be hardware neutral. And as I said, dial up and, say, ISDN might be license free.
Department of Broadband Internet, indeed.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Interesting parallels with biological parasites. Early computer virus/worms did damage, intentionally or unintentionally, which drew attention to themselves, causing them to be removed. In microbiology this is the bad parasite, that kills the host or provokes an immune response. Botnets have moved up to the commensal parasite level, living as undetectably as possible, leaving their hosts unharmed for the most part, even patching and preventing other botnet infections. One wonders if the world PC population will adapt as have humans to live with and benefit from parasites (probably not!)
Oh dear. I don't care whether you wanted to imply by quoting something that wasn't there, or were just jumping to the conclusion that offence was the poster's motivation without any evidence. Either way, you're continuing in a irrelevant rant about something that was never previously mentioned in order to pick up an argument.
I am heartily pleased for you and your impervious cloak that repeals all offence. Perhaps we should all have one, but it's such a pity that's not what was being discussed. So put it away.