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Two Worm "Families" Make Up Most Botnets
JMoon writes "HNS has an article about the Sdbot and Gaobot families which are responsible for most botnets worldwide. These two families were responsible for 80 percent of detections related to bots during the first quarter of 2007. Other culprits, although on a much lesser scale, included Oscarbot, IRCbot or RXbot."
It's as simple as updateing to SP2, something that works automatically.
Updating to SP2 isn't simple though. It's a massive download if you're on dailup or even a slow DSL connection. On top of that it takes up a lot of disk space/RAM and if you have anything but latest high-speed machine you're going to be sitting there waiting a long time while it installs.
If you are stuck with dialup, get a friend to download the SP2 CD and burn it for you.
If you have DSL or Cable and nothing else on your LAN is infected, your NAT or other firewall should protect you from "out of the box" threats. As long as you stick to known-safe web sites like windowsupdate and most security-software vendors, you should be OK long enough to get updated.
What's that? You are on DSL or Cable and do NOT have a firewall? Spend a few bucks and get one!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A large fraction of the problem can be taken care of by using a hardware firewall in front of your PC from the moment you first plug it in, which'll usually keep you safe long enough to get the current security upgrades. That's not fool-proof - there are bad guys hunting for flaws in popular firewall boxes - but it's a good start.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hmm... then to fix that bot problem, all we'd have to do is report the IP Addresses hammering against our firewalls as potential pirates? In the current hype and the leeway IP holders get when filing suits and pressing Names from the ISPs, it should be easy to instill enough fear in those upgrade-resistant people ...
I have a plan. Thanks for helping me on the track.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No ISP is going to shut off an account because of an infected computer. They might throttle it somewhat, but it is the site administrator's responsibility to deal with infected computers. What? Your parents don't have a "site administrator" overseeing their computers? (((except when you are there... ha ha))) Well, that sounds like a real problem, doesn't it?
What we have are general-purpose computers that people install random software on without thinking about where it came from, what it might do and the consequences of having that happen. Then, they don't check to see what their computer is doing when it is supposedly idle and thrashing around on the hard drive or is really slow. Well, maybe it is just getting old and needs to be replaced. Right.
So we have the equivalent of handing a loaded revolver to a three-year-old and leaving the room. We have seen how they can hurt themselves with it. We can see how they hurt others with it. And about all that is done is giving them some more bullets.
Let's be clear about one thing here. Windows "security" or the lack of it is not the problem. If the machine is locked down utterly so that nothing can be installed, removed or modified Windows security is perfectly adequate. Unfortunately, nobody seems to want to run their computer this way. There is no security if the "user" can simply install any old thing they want, be it some new flash player with a bug in it, WeatherBug or a bot trojan. Signing code is not the answer - people aren't reading the messages that are displayed. You could have a page of text displayed when a trojan is installed that says in eight different ways "this will take over your computer and make it ours" and people would install it.
The answer is pretty clear. General purpose computers that can have software installed are a tool that must be monitored, controlled and administered. Giving one to a user and leaving them alone with it is a reciepe for disaster. Just like the disaster with spam, botnets and viruses we are seeing right now.
Would a botnet by any other name smell just as sour?
Probably not.
If you'd called it a distributed asset-monitoring and -control system and given it a fancy acronym like DAMACS or something, it would've been a better sell.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That might be part of the problem, but I'm sure there are more people out there that simply don't upgrade. Every time I visit my sister and/or parents house I make sure to do it, because they never download or install updates. If it wasn't for me I doubt they'd have gotten SP2.
I run in to two groups that make up the majority of "not updated" systems:
1) People who won't do any manual steps at all to update. Every so often, Windows has an update that needs you to interact with it. Rather than autoinstalling it'll just put the little "You've got updates" icon in your sys tray and pop up a bubble about it from time to time. However some people just refuse to deal with that. A couple clicks is more than they are willing to do. Totally automated is ok, but they can't be bothered to do anything more.
2) However an even larger number don't want their system to reboot. Tons of those at work. They have something or other running continuously that they can't be bothered to save the state on. So they turn off the updates so that it won't reboot. Yes, really.
That accounts for at least 90% of the no-update people I run across. There's a small percentage that won't do it because they read on some forum that some guy had a problem with an update and they are convinced Microsoft will break their system, but most are just lazy as hell.
maybe stop using an insecure web browser and OS?
You can't take the sky from me.
Horns are really just a broken halo.