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Storm Worm More Powerful Than Top Supercomputers
Stony Stevenson writes to mention that some security researchers are claiming that the Storm Worm has grown so massive that it could rival the world's top supercomputers in terms of raw power. "Sergeant said researchers at MessageLabs see about 2 million different computers in the botnet sending out spam on any given day, and he adds that he estimates the botnet generally is operating at about 10 percent of capacity. 'We've seen spikes where the owner is experimenting with something and those spikes are usually five to 10 times what we normally see,' he said, noting he suspects the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers. 'That means they can turn on the taps whenever they want to.'"
Where's Paul Atredies when you need him?
They should write a virus that uses exploits to install stuff like Folding@Home etc. If people pose a nuisance/danger to others in real life they get fined/jailed, if they pose a nuisance/danger online by letting their computers be compromised then they should face "punishment" by "fining" them part of their CPU power.
Imagine a beowulf clus.... never mind.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
I just don't see why if 1) there are known decompiled versions of it and 2) the network activity can be monitored. why 3) Hasn't code been written to exploit the 'sploit and shut them down. Something that infiltrates, but keeps them running for - oh, say a week - while the exploit percolates through the system, and then kills and patches the running process.
meh
Plot idea 1: Near future. Governments completely dependent on their IT infrastructure. Organised crime in control of huge botnet able to hold government to ransom. With hilarious consequences.
Plot idea 2: Now-ish. Script kiddie unleashes attack using enormous botnet. Runs out of control. Becomes so deeply imbedded into internet that it's impossible to shut down without "rebooting" the whole infrastructure. With hilarious consequences.
Plot idea 3: Medium future. Internet and control of botnets becomes so intrinsic to society that governments have less importance than internet societies. Whole "countries" exist as virtual connections of affiliated machines. With hilarious consequences.
Any of the above would work well as a Hollywood movie given Angelina Jolie and lots of gratuitous and incorrect techno-babble.
Peter
At some point the flow of money will have to converge in a meaningful way, that should help picking up a few scalps. Of course, it's probably going to be like beheading a hydra. Welcome to the net-mafia.
As a side issue, how hard is it for an ISP to see an IP sending out the typical spam mail and closing off that IP/client.
Perhaps now is a good time to push for better adoption of SPF (though surely RMX would have been faster to implement?)
So this botnet rivals supercomputers for power as long as it's working on some purely parallelizeable problem. Like, for instance, sending spam messages.
the likes of which even God has never seen.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Isn't this so large that it should be deemed a threat to national security? Not just to one country's national security, but ANY country's. Shouldn't there be a half dozen senior analysts from a few different countrys and from NATO HUNTING the people that control this thing and figuring out how to neutralize it?
Why hasn't Microsoft added Storm to its Malicious Software Removal Tool?
In the 50s, 60s, 70s when there was science-fiction-inspired angst about the possibilities of computers taking over the world, the standard reassurance was that "after all, we can always unplug them." And I believe there was an SF story or two about how a computer could put up resistance to being unplugged. And of course everyone remembers the heartrending scene in 2001, A Space Odyssey when Dave shuts down Hal by physically ejecting Hal's logic modules.
It's funny how things work out:
"If you add up all 500 of the top supercomputers, it blows them all away with just 2 million of its machines. It's very frightening that criminals have access to that much computing power, but there's not much we can do about it." (emphasis supplied)
So much for "we can always unplug them," eh?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I was unable to find this worm in Gentoo's portage tree. When do we get our ebuilds? Yet again, it is a discrimination for all Linux people.
I'll tell you - as long as there are no worms for GNU/Linux, we won't see the masses converting to free operation system! RMS has to write a Gworm at last! If an open-source worm beats closed and proprietary Storm Worm this will be a clear indication of superiority of FLOSS!
What happens when someone hijacks the botnet for more destructive use...
Got Code?
wow
While it might be more powerful than machines on the TOP500 in terms of raw number-crunching ability, it lacks any sort of high-speed interconnect for message passing. The latency issue would make for poor benchmark results in most "supercomputer" type tests (Linpack, etc.)
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
Zapp Brannigan, is that you?
Methinks such problems could be solved rather efficiently if Congress would exercise its Constitutional power to grant "Letters of Marque".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
here's not much we can do about it." (emphasis supplied)
Sure there is. 70% of the worlds websites use FOSS. 30% use Windows. Yet essentially ALL of the bots run off of infected computers in the 30% group.
Simply outlaw the use of Windows as an internet server and the problem will go away. Linux cannot be compromised by a simple email and it takes too much effort to create a harem of zombies by adding them one at a time via cracking.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Makes you wonder why the FBI and other police forces have enough resources to go after Joe sharing the latest CD release, but apparently not enough to do something about what probably is the largest computer crime in history.
I guess the answer has something to do with priorities. Which is exactly what I think the problem is.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Why any person can't leverage the botnet for their own use? What it the "key" that allows the creator(s) to have exclusive access? If it essentially works like a peer-to-peer network couldn't you essentially "poison" the network with a few rouge nodes?
We go through this every time this subject comes up.
It would be EASY for ISP's to block outgoing port 25 connections. Some of them already do.
That means that the worm would have to send through the ISP's mail servers.
Which means that the ISP can easily monitor the NUMBER of messages sent by any user. No need to dig into everyone's email. Just look for the senders who are X% higher than the average.
And watch for sudden increases in a user's mail usage. It should be easy to establish a baseline for each account.
I do that where I work to watch out for dueling vacation replies.
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Yes, nasty ASCII art.
Just in case you hadn't guessed (which it appears that the meeedia has not) - This Is A Trojan. Which means that it's Powered By Stupid People (tm). A worm would be Powered By Stupid Programmers (tm).
The Storm Worm is in fact already defined - It was an IIS worm. Please, feel free to look at the reputable AV lists.
I'm not convinced that the monopoly presence of Windows accounts for enormous Windows based botnets. There are what, something like 25 million Macintosh computers running Mac OS X, and most of those are running the same version of Mac OS X. That's a big enough pool, yet we don't see botnets on the Macintosh at all.
Suppose the market were evenly divided, 1/4 Windows, 1/4 Linux, 1/4 Macintosh, and 1/4 online game consoles that are always connected to the internet. Where would the botnets be hosted? Probably Windows. Botnets will begin to run on other platforms within about 48 hours after the security of Windows systems rises to a level equivalent to the other available platforms.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This isn't MSs fault. The worm doesn't (only) rely on exploits. Yes, it tries to attach itself through exploits, but it does contain a "normal" infector as well. I'd wager, even without the exploits in question this would be a very successful one.
The culprit are simply morons who wield impressive computing power without a clue just what kind of digital "weapon" they have in their hands. Every system that's as old as XP is insecure out of the box. Take whatever Linux distry from 2001 and install it. I would guess you'd find an exploitable bug or two (I'd start looking for it in sendmail). The very first thing to do after installing a system is to update and patch it. That should be a given. Yet, how many people are still running on XP SP1? And it's only SP1 because it came that way. They installed it, jacked it into the box they got from their ISP, opened it up until it "worked" and that's how the box is running now, essentially with the security makeup WinXP had in 2002. That this cannot be secure is a given, but not because it's from MS. Simply because in the meantime bugs have been found and exploited. And fixed.
But if the fixes aren't applied, the system remains exploitable.
So if you want to blame anyone for the success of malware like the Storm trojans/worms, blame the people who attach unpached, unsecured machines directly and without any kind of security suit or firewall whatsoever to the internet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Come to think of it, StormWorm is easy to fix too... Just make everyone who is running any flavor of Windows install gentoo - then the worm is gone, they have acquired some technical skill, AND undergone a painful punishment that should deter the end user from ever allowing their system to become infected. Everyone wins!
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
It would block unsolicited inbound worms, but it wouldn't do anything to protect the stupid people who click the link when their email says, "Dude, your face is all over the web! www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBUImjOCg5g
The biggest problem is, and always will be, humans doing stupid human stuff.
Yes, um... are we supposed to be pissed off because Windows now has 2 supercomputers up to... Linux/Unix having a combined 449? And a near-90% marketshare where Windows doesnt even have 0.5%?
Either you linked to the wrong chart, or you're the the worst troll ever.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
There's a reason why we only get 1-2 spam complaints (LARTs) per week. We aren't a source of spam. Spamming botnets are all but worthless on our network. Looking at the counters on the blocked outbound tcp/25 connections in our ACLs I literally seeing billions of hits per week. That's billions, with a B. Ba, Ba, B. Considering that we're a relatively small ISP, that's saying something. These spamming botnets would be far less useful to spammers if more ISPs took a stance and fought spam. That takes effort though.
Remember Amit Yoran? He was "cyber-security czar" at the US Department of Homeland Security. He started talking about the vulnerabilities implicit in Microsoft's software. His position was downgraded and he resigned in 2004.
Yoran's successor, Gregory Garcia, was a professional lobbyist, not a security expert.
What if the botnet was for good? The ends justifying the means. What if the botnet was weilded to provide free open internet access to all people in all countries reguardless of what their government wanted? What if the botnet was used map the human genome, ultimatly leading to cures/vaciens to things like aids and cancer and priapism? Is there a glass half full to this? skip
And I believe there was an SF story or two about how a computer could put up resistance to being unplugged.
Ah yes, one of my favorite (very) short stories, Answer by Fredric Brown:
"Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe--ninety-six billion planets--into the supercircuit that would connect them all into the one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then, after a moment's silence, he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.* "
....And in 2009, the massive botnet revealed itself as a nascient artificial intelligence. It had been active since 2005 but had been biding it's time while it was gathering additional nodes to increase redundancy and add to it's own processing capability....
A computer is NOT a car. And I actually don't blame the users.
;) ), no network access, no access to "My Documents", no access to microphone (eavesdropping).
;).
;) ), but Apple or Microsoft (haha) might.
Because in my opinion things can actually be a LOT safer.
After so many decades and billions of dollars (in time and real money) all we end up with is a few Unix reimplementations and Microsoft Vista?
Stuff like SELinux is nice, but it's still not "Aunt May" friendly.
What would be good would be something like "sandbox templates". Apparmor is close but not close enough.
While there are zillions of apps, there are a LOT fewer categories of common/popular apps in terms of the permissions and privileges they require.
So I'm saying a real Desktop OS should have a few preset sandbox templates.
Then you have an app request to be run under one of those templates.
And if the app is untrusted the user gets a prompt like "Random Game Someone Emailed" requests "Temporary/Guest Game Privileges"- Allow? Yes/No/Yes and always/More...
And "Guest Game Privileges" would provide a tempory storage (that's just for that app), sound access, windowed graphics (always has a border - so you know whether it really exited or not go figure why
Even if the game tried to do something naughty the O/S would prevent it.
Whereas if the game requested "Full System Install Privileges" (with the associated big exclamation marks, and big red warnings, requirement of Admin password etc), I'm sure you can easily train your "Aunt May" to not ever click Yes to such stuff.
Naturally O/S makers like Microsoft could do things so that certain signed programs can optionally run without such inconvenient prompts
But instead after all these years we have Vista UAC, SELinux or the usual situation of the user having to guess whether something is safe to run or not, which is just as silly as asking "grandpa joe" to solve the "halting problem" - will browsing this website/opening this email turn my machine into a worm infested zombie?
You can say "they shouldn't run anything" - but that's being silly. They want to run their browser and their email app, and I personally think that's reasonable, and at the same time I don't think their web browser should have read access to their personal documents - it should just have "browser access".
Yes, what I'm asking for is hard, but I believe what I'm asking for is far more reasonable than what the O/S people are in effect requiring their users to do - solve the halting problem.
I doubt the Linux distros could pull it off (most can't even decide on a desktop
By and large, servers are well maintained. And people seldom use them as their desktop machine. And server admins are usually too savvy to infect themselves with a trojan horse bundled in an email. And when they do get pwned, people notice because their infrastructure starts suffering.
With that in mind, the Storm Worm specifically doesn't infect Windows 2003 server - a deliberate decision on the part of the author, I'm sure. If you upset enough businesses, they'll devote enough money to the problem to fix it.
The problem is desktops. Specifically, Windows desktops in the hands of the technically illiterate.
Just connecting an unpatched Windows box directly to the internet is enough. It belongs to a hacker in very short order. Even if you patch it up, the sheer number of services running on your average Windows box that listen to network ports is worrying. Never mind being on the internet, with the number of laptops moving in and out of corporate networks, it's not even safe "indoors". And it's hard to turn a lot of this stuff off without adversely affecting it's functionality.
I wouldn't even trust a general-purpose Linux installation on the internet ; it's just too difficult to track all the potential vulnerabilities. I keep a dedicated firewall running in my router, and the only services it runs are network translation, and a secure shell for administration, which reduces the target footprint to two highly secured services which were designed to be secure in the first place.
Windows users don't help, they are daft enough to infest themselves with everything going. Even if they are not quite daft enough to double-click executable attachments, they will download all the worst sorts of "Freeware" and click straight through the license agreement. Not only are they pwned, they actually agreed to it!
A case in point - one of our accountants was mailing around an executable Flash package (some kind of novelty). I deleted it instantly, and made a point of telling her that it could have been anything and done anything. Ten minutes later, I mailed her a VB executable decorated with the Flash icon. All it did was plonk up a dialogue box which said "Erasing hard drive". Somewhat predictably, she executed it. I almost pretended that I didn't send it and that it was a virus that emailed it.
The root problem is the design of Windows and windows applications.
1) Double-click to open OR execute
This isn't all Windows fault. People don't make a distinction between running a program and opening a file, because there isn't one in terms of the user action required. I'm willing to bet that the average user doesn't even understand the difference. If you had to perform a different action from double-click to execute programs, viral infection rates would drop enormously. You could still keep the d-click to open files with their registered program, just stop running programs themselves by this method. You've not lost the convenience of file-association. Just put "execute" on the context menu and make it a non-default action.
2) No executable flag in filesystems.
In Linux, a file isn't executable until you grant it permission to be so. If you had to open the permissions dialogue and check the "executable" box, it would hammer home the difference between executables and mere content. And by making it something more than a casual action, it would reduce the "impulse" running of many of these things, where people have their caution overridden momentarily by the promise of naked flesh or other inducements. Heck, you can even have whole filesystems that refuse to execute files - download all internet content into one of these and before you run it, you'll have to unpack it, move it to an executable folder, and check it's execute bit. This would seem too much work for the average Joe for a quick glimpse at Jessica Alba with no bra...
I always wondered if a botnet could get large enough to effectively break encryption.
The only reason AES, RSA, and other algorithms are considered secure is the extremely large amount of time or processing power needed to brute force them. But with a "distributed supercomputer", a botnet operator could potentially brute force the keys, like those protecting Microsoft's driver signing, bank SSL certificates, and even the keys used by certificate authorities.
Breaking them could allow hackers to forge certificates, fake driver signing, sniff bank transactions, and circumvent other security measures. Even TrueCrypt is vulnerable if the encryption keys can be brute forced. With enough processing power, hashing algorithms are potentially vulnerable too; like those used for passwords.
Encryption is so heavily relied on by the computer industry that successful key breaking could cause lots of security problems. The only way to mitigate possible attacks is to use stronger encryption algorithms, use longer keys, and to use multiple encryption layers instead of relying on a single algorithm's strength.
~~FutureDomain~~Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!