Slashdot Mirror
Cybercriminals Building New, Stealthier Networks
ancientribe writes "Cybercriminals are adopting a new method of hiding and sustaining their malicious Websites and botnet infrastructures so they'll be harder to detect, called "fast-flux," according to an article in Dark Reading. Criminal organizations behind two infamous malware families — Warezov/Stration and Storm — in the past few months have separately moved their infrastructures to so-called fast-flux service networks. The article says bad guys like fast-flux not only because it keeps them up and running, but also because it's more efficient than traditional methods of infecting victims' machines." I'm not exactly sure why this is new/different than the more well known open relay proxy networks.
Has a lot more detail: http://www.honeynet.org/papers/ff/fast-flux.html
With power comes responsibility. If you want unfettered internet access, it's your responsibility to make sure that your participation in this network doesn't cause problems for others. Since most residential internet users have neither the ability nor the intention to shoulder that responsibility, their upstream provider has to find ways to protect other internet users from his customers, because if he doesn't, he will ultimately have to pay for the damage that they do (higher traffic costs, less favorable peering agreements, blacklisting, etc.)
The net has grown very fast and so far we've shirked the responsibility issue: Customer's complain about spam and when the spammer's provider says it's not their responsibility, they're called a safe-haven for spammers. On the other hand, when customers get cut off because their computers are scanning and infecting other machines, they complain that it's not their fault and how are they supposed to keep their system clean without a full time admin and it's none of the ISPs business as long as the internet access bills are paid.