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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?
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'.
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.
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.
25% does seem a little high, but then again it's not hard to imagine that people who this affects don't talk with too many people online who they haven't met in person. Just today I was playing Counter-Strike (1.6 of course) and a fellow player revealed the reason for them not moving or shooting; a pop-up. This is hardly a rare occurrence. I can't empathise in any way with those who are perfectly content to accept their computer is infected with some sort of adware and believe there is nothing they can do to prevent the infection of such malware.
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
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
On linux, you only need a script that does the equivalent of this: Or, if you have netcat available to you and prefer to use that tool: Or just include all the tcpip stuff in the trojan the idiot linux luser runs. It's easy enough to add it to their
These things aren't after your own files and such They are after your network resources, and these are trivial to get, even on *nix, my friend. When linux is popular amongst the idiots who run everything that they are sent or directed to download, they will certainly run it on that platform. And doing this stuff on linux is far more trivial than doing it on windoze thanks to the standard 'dev' tools and shells that are pretty much guaranteed to be available to the attacker.
I've got 4 computers in my house... now I've got to figure out which one of them in part of a botnet!
One interesting method is to query an anti-spam database using your IP address, and see if you are listed as a spam source. Quick checks can be done at robtex or dnsstuff.
If your IP address shows up on PSBL, CBL, SpamCop, or WPBL your host is probably infected and a source of spam or other abuse.
For Windows, use IE to go to Safety.live.com - Microsoft's official online free spyware, virus detector/remover (choose your language)
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.
This is what you get as the result of profit first corporations, everybody else pays the costs and that cost often far exceeds (by a factor of thousands) the increase in profit that some asshat corporate executive wet dreams over.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
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"
There are a bunch of port scanner sites out there that can check the integrity of your firewall. DSL Reports has a decent one if memory serves. Use Spybot Search & Destroy, LavaSoft AdAware and a good antivirus like AVG or Avast. If you suspect that there is unwanted network traffic to and from your system, use Ethereal to see where it is going to and coming from. If you suspect an exploit of Internet Explorer, HijackThis can shed some light on it. Check the task manager process tab for suspicious looking entries and Google them. Lay off the pr0n! and v1agr@ emails.
By far the most powerful and versatile utility is The Geek Down The Street (TM), possibly surpassed by Your Local Computer Repair Shop (TM). Ultimately, there is no replacememnt for smart practices and secure software. Use an alternative browser like Firefox or Opera, or better yet pop on over to http://www.linux.org/dist/ and take your pick.
FairTax baby!
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
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.
- 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?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