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We Know Who's Behind Storm Worm
jmason reminds us of a story from a few weeks back that got little attention, adding "This doesn't seem to be just bluster; as far as I can tell, everyone who knows the RBN now agrees that this seems likely." Brian Krebs's Security Fix blog at the Washington Post carried a story about the Storm worm containing some pretty staggering allegations. "Dmitri Alperovitch [of Secure Computing] said federal law enforcement officials who need to know have already learned the identities of those responsible for running the Storm worm network, but that US authorities have thus far been prevented from bringing those responsible to justice due to a lack of cooperation from officials in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the Storm worm authors are thought to reside. In a recent investigative series on cyber crime featured on washingtonpost.com, St. Petersburg was fingered as the host city for one of the Internet's most profligate and cyber-crime enabling operation — the Russian Business Network. Alperovitch blames the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the political influence of operatives within the Federal Security Service (the former Soviet KGB) for the protection he says is apparently afforded to cybercrime outfits such as RBN and the Storm worm gang. 'The right people now know who the Storm worm authors are,' Alperovitch said. 'It's incredibly hard because a lot of the FSB leadership and Putin himself originate from there, where there are a great deal of people with connections in high places.'"
Corrupt Russian Government officials in collusion with shady Russian underworld types? Who'd a thunk it?
Shocking! You mean the criminal friends of powerful politicians don't get prosecuted in Russia? Good thing that never happens here!
Currently hooked on AMP
U.S. authorities have thus far been prevented from bringing those responsible to justice due to a lack of cooperation from officials in St. Petersburg, Russia...
No seriously though. This is no suprise. We can pretend that the US and Russia are the best of friends but in reality these kinds of situations will continue to happen. What is the Russian Governments incentive to take care of this issue. Like it or not it is good for their economy.
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
Except in this case the Federal Gov't doesn't send in Elliot Ness... It sends in... well... nobody.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Does this count as 'cyberwar'? I see great potential for making lots of money^W^W^W^Wpatriotically serving the country by grafting in a Bureau of Cyberdefence into the Department of Homeland Security...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
More like:
In Soviet Russia, the RBN owns the government!
My blog
According to Google maps, St. Petersburg is well within 220 miles of international waters...
If they can get exact coordinates, I can think of a (firing) solution
Seriously ...could the whole point of this -from the Russian perspective at least, be that they can use or hire their local blackhats to wreak economic and/or civil damage (eg what happened to estonia) pretty much at will?
I'm not saying that's what Russia is actively doing -but what incentive would Putin have to dismantle a tool that could be used so effectively against his -and russia's- enemies?
why not blackhole the source IP blocks?
1. Provide RBN with Windows Vista
2. RBN gets slowed down repeatedly clicking "Da, continusky"
3. Battle over.
(Besides, if a minimum level of computer security was mandated, and critical machines were kept off public networks, cybercrime, worms and viruses would be reduced in quantity and effectiveness. The Government has a position open for Internet Czar - why is it not filled and why isn't it being used to push the importance of network security? Hell, I'd put in for the job if I thought I'd have a whelk's chance in a supernova of either getting it or getting heard afterwards.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Paranomocracy" is rule by criminals, as first used by Russian Ouspensky in a 1919 letter describing what he also called "kakourgocracy" the new Soviet rule by criminals.
--
make install -not war
We have high level gov. officials who are corrupt. Welcome to America^h^h^h^h^h^h^h France^h^h^h^h^h^h China^h^h^h^h^h Russia.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I've said this before, so excuse me for sounding like a broken record.
What needs to happen is cutting Russia completely off the net. Cut them off at every peering point they have, and if someone (China) still continues routing Russian network traffic, block the Russian network traffic where it's being passed onto the responsible part of the Internet.
The reason why I'm advocating this is because what the Russian cybercriminals are doing is not just criminal, but more importantly threatening the Internet infrastructure itself. There just has to be a better way of protecting the network from bad actors who are hellbent on destroying it.
Since that's unlikely to happen unless the Russian criminals do something extraordinarily stupid (like successfully attacking several Western states directly), the next alternative is diplomatic isolation. They don't do something to curb the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, well, gee, Vladimir, you don't get to sit on the Security Council, ballrooms in Geneva and you can most certainly kiss that EU membership you so want goodbye forever. And don't even think of vacationing on those nice ski resorts on the Alps Russians are so fond of. Visa denied.
The state sponsored welfare program for the benefit of Russian mafia gotta stop. Every year billions and billions of dollars of OUR money is being transferred with the silent blessing of Russian Government to the Russian mafia and other criminal elements in Russia. I don't know what else to call that but a global welfare program.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
In unrelated news, there are troubling reports of a new Storm Worm coming from mars. Random slashdot posts have appeared stating "In soviet Mars, The planet reddens YOU"
Agents are exploring a correlation. Slashdot has already modded them down as trolls.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
You mean like this?
The problem with that thinking is that this ecosystem is entirely created by humans, and that there are no limits on population in the first place. The internet's not like an enclosed valley which can support 300 sheep no matter what. The limits on what the internet can handle are constantly expanding, and so far there's been little to no strain.
As for whether the worm is cool and impressive, well, that depends on what you think cool and impressive are. It's extremely well built, runs quite well and is hard to catch once it's entrenched. It's a lot like the mafia, and if you're like the rest of the US, that is cool. Also like the mafia, it's really only cool if you're the one running the show or you have little to no experience with it.
I had read through the Wikipedia page on Leo Kuvayev that he may be (one of the?) main guy(s) behind the storm worm botnet.
Here's the reference to Leo Kuvayev having a role with the storm botnet. Considering the massive amounts of spam that is pumped out for domains that he purchases, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Though according to his Crooked Registrar Partners, he apparently lives in Finland. Though I somehow doubt that he really owns an entire Finnish city, as his address would have you believe.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Good grief, don't let's give the geeky profession airs. The FSB has a lot better resources than a few thousand compromised Windoze machines. They're going to spam somebody to death? Raise next year's black budget by running a few dozen phishing scams? Sheesh.
Besides, this kind of goofball techno stunt isn't the Russian style. They excel at the basic ancient human-centered form of espionage and security compromise. If you think they want to penetrate your bureaucracy, then don't waste your time changing your AOL password weekly or carefully not opening e-mail attachments. Instead, be cautious about that hot blonde at the gym who confessed a lifelong sexual weakness for balding guys trying to work off the desk paunch and who expresses a sweet naivete and engaging curiosity about how, precisely, you do your job.
Mrs White didit, with the candlestick, in the drawing room.
(Or perhaps it was Mr Putin, with the laptop computer, in the server room.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Seriously, how many of you see all kinds of stuff coming out of China, Korea, Nigeria, etc.?
NONE of them get prosecuted either....
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
Apparently the Storm worm is the world's fastest supercomputer. And even if it weren't, funneling whatever attacks the FSB might be likely to do through the Storm botnet would provide excellent plausible deniability.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One imagines there may be a complex pattern of incentives. RBN for these purposes should be considered a deniable branch of the Russian state.
The incentive to do it is to try out net sabotage techniques for possible later use in a controlled and deniable way. You don't have the potential embarrassment of trying to do it clandestinely and getting caught. You do it openly but deniably.
The incentive for allowing it is the hope that practice in defense will be more valuable than practice in attack, and that the net will evolve more robust defense systems than if you adopted state measures to prevent it. If you could even find any.
However, what should be somewhat alarming here is that a regime most of whose officials came out of the Soviet equivalent of the Abwehr or the SS should now be in power and conducting a sort of guerrilla war on the West. Never forget, the organizations these guys came out of murdered several times the numbers the Nazis did and operated a camp network many times the size of the Nazi one.
They are not people like us.