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Russian Hacker Gang Vanishes Again
Arashtamere writes "The shadowy hacker and malware hosting network that only recently fled Russia to set up operations in China has now pulled the plug there and vanished yet again. An analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit said iDefense had tracked RBN's migration earlier in the week from servers based in Russia to ones running in China, after obtaining at least seven net blocks of Chinese IP addresses. As of Wednesday, RBN controlled 5,120 IP addresses assigned to Chinese service providers; known RBN clients were even seen using those addresses that day. But with its China move putting the spotlights of the media and the security community on the organization, RBN suddenly went offline on Thursday. 'They severed connections to six of the seven net blocks on November 8,' the analyst said. RBN as a single organization may be dead and gone; it may even now be breaking up into smaller pieces farmed out to multiple countries' Internet infrastructures."
It seems like having all of your traffic on seven well-defined subnets is an easy way to make all of your activity really obvious.
But hey, at least these guys are being pursued and thwarted. There are way too many hackers and script kiddies out there who need to get their butts kicked one and become productive members of society with their skills. This is an important lesson and it comes at a price, but ultimately we need to convert these people to use their technical knowledge for good. By making it harder and harder for the underworld to survive, the economic benefits of that lifestyle become overshadowed by its risks. This will bring these people out into the light, and hopefully both reduce the economic pain they cause with their mischief, and also let them contribute constructively.
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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
As the Kremlin moves into cyberspace, each KGB clique will want a "piece of the action" and has absorbed some alumni of the RBN. In the 21st century, even the Russian mafia needs an online presence.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that setting up inside China was bound to be a bit of a bad move...
Might as well hang out a sign... ---> R U S S I A N -- B O T N E T -- M A S T E R S -- H E R E ! ! !
dapper.. AW HELL NO theyre using outdated ubuntu distros just when we thought this couldn't get any worse
Well, based in China as I am, I can think of another reason the RBN stayed here for a few days and then quit. The internet connection to the outside world is horribly slow! I regularly get modem speeds when using US-based sites such as slashdot. If file transfers go above 10k/s then I'm ecstatic. I can't imagine that spammers would be happy with slow connections. I had a Nordic businessman ask me for some consulting recently. I talked to him, and he said that the internet was too slow between there and Denmark, and could I fix it? I just rolled my eyes and told him to talk to either Hu Jintao or the Ministry of Propaganda and Information...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Major! There's something else.
Six men...wearing US issue Army boots.
They came in from the west and followed the Russian hacker gang out to the south.
We move! 5 meter spread...no sound!
While I'm not sure it's a good thing that this hacker network has vanished, I am still pleased with the headline using the term 'hacker' correctly.
Perhaps we are finally ready to put the misnomer 'cracker' to rest once and for all.
Now I feel like a bit of cheese...
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When I moved into an apartment in Shenzhen, the landlord had already initiated internet service. Problem was, it was the entry-level package, and yes, it was slow. If I wanted speed, I had to wait until I went into the office.
All I had to do was contact China Telecom and ask to move up to the next tier. Throughput was doubled by the afternoon. And my billing dropped by 30% per year. Much better...
Diaper sap?
There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
So how has this affected spam and cyber crime? It would be interesting to see if these networks vanishing has any affect.
The internet is a dangerous place. You don't pay your protection money and things could happen. Packets get dropped all the time you know.
Isn't it funny? Hackers and social engineers can make 4 times what you or I do as long as they A: Cause a shit storm, B: Get caught. How many other types of criminals can actually get away with this, well, besides politicians? I bet they were never really even in China. These guys obviously know their shit, they could be in Mexico hanging out at Senior Frogs knocking back shooters while controlling a bunch of zombie machines for all we know.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Rawn! Get too tha choppahhhh!
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm curious, is Slashdot not censored?
I imagine if you're having to go around that, it might slow things down a bit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
for muddying the waters
hacker means someone who writes software
cracker means a computer based criminal
i think there's a difference...
Vanishes Again, and continues hacking while invisible -- that's right, just like before, they'll continue hacking. And they're using new IP's!
How unusual.
Perhaps we are finally ready to put the misnomer 'cracker' to rest once and for all.
Quit being an assclown and re-learn your vocabulary: hacker: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html cracker: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html
- Controlling the Russian Beast
(BTW, all of these posts show how little you know about Russia)Do you have an agenda or something?
Or are Poles so stuck in history that it's their new fetish now: ruining US/EU relationships with Russia?
Russian bases belonga to Kazakhstan, the greatest kuntry on a Earth.
Hi Five.
Yakshi Mash.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Hey, Really? No shit. If you are doing a bunch of stuff you don't really want taken notice of, having the mass media saying "Hey look, they're in China and have these netblocks!" could be bad . It also stands a chance of coming to the notice of someone in a position to do something about it - also not good from the hackers' point of view.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.
Apart from how they get on the machine in the first place, I guess these clients all work in similar ways? Central controller sends work out to distributed workers, who do their thing and then report back for more work. I guess botnets are a bit more cunning as they have to hide and can change jobs/controllers/whatever.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Can you tell us which 7 netblocks they are (were) using, so that we can block them on our firewalls?
/20 block is mentioned. The article itself was previously linked on Slashdot; it's about a sysadmin who decided to block the RBN's address ranges and was rewarded by a noticable drop in compromised customer boxes.
All that I could find was the fourth comment to this article, in which a
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Packets? I believe you mean "internets."
That's a nice set of shiny tubes you have there sonny, We wouldn't want anything to happen to them now, would we?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Who says they're not using it for good, already...? What is "good"?
Except people who get caught don't turn to good, they generally get thrown in the prison system for years where they grow even more contempt for humanity than they did before.
That was quick, must've used Atlas Van Lines. Or maybe they just used Brown. They can move stuff FAST!
Hopefully they will move to Afghanistan or Iraq, they will bomb them.
I agree, we shouldn't have stopped all those Folding@Home programs they were running. I mean, why else would they need so many computers?
As long as they can find complacent registrars and ISPs to propagate their system. They left Russia when the heat was turned up on their hosting / registration providers there. At least the companies in Russia speak English - or at least admit to knowing enough English to respond to complaints from the US. So then the hacker gang packed up and went to China, where the companies get away with pretending to not speak English, in spite of hosting sites in English and selling domains with English language registration data.
Exactly what drove this most recent move I don't know yet. It will be interesting to see where they pop up next. I wouldn't be surprised if they even just decided to take a little "cooling off" period, and we'll see them there again shortly.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They've had wars several times in the 20th century due to border disputes. Right now both sides make lots of money and the friction is way down, but underlying tension may still be there.
China could close down these business whenever it sees a need.
*Whoosh!*
Look into this.
"But this one goes to 11!"
The first rule of RBN is, you do not talk about RBN.
The second rule of RBN is, you DO NOT talk about RBN.
If something says BSOD, goes coredump, logs out, the crack is over.
Two crackers to a host.
One crack at a time.
No GUIs, no frameworks.
Cracks will go on as long as they have to.
If this is your first account at RBN, you have to crack.
What's that from?
i am a soviet space shuttle
To get increased upload speeds or to create a distraction..? Maybe they just got fed up of the Russian winter and went on holiday!
Predator
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
(AP News) Guanzhou China - 35 unidentified bodies found in a ditch in China's Guangzhou province. The bodies are Caucasian and appear to be of Russian decent. Their are signs of abuse on the bodies, but the local police have no information on the subject.
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The Chinese are known for quick justice. One possible outcome.
Hunger is the best sauce.