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Recruiting Friendly Botnets To Counter Bad Botnets

Posted by kdawson on from the was-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly dept.

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a University of Washington project aiming to marshal swarms of 'good' computers to take on botnets. Their approach — called Phalanx — uses its distributed network to shield a server from DDoS attacks. Instead of that server being accessed directly, all information must pass through the swarm of 'mailbox' computers, which are swapped around randomly and only pass on information to the shielded server when it requests it. Initially the researchers propose using the servers in networks such as Akamai as mailboxes; ultimately they would like to piggyback the good-botnet functionality onto BitTorrent."

9 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Throttled by zedlander · · Score: 5, Funny

    ultimately they would like to piggyback the good-botnet functionality onto BitTorrent.

    Yeah, just let the ISP's bring your site to its knees instead of the botnets.

  2. This will never work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The researchers are so ignorant of history. All the malware writers have to do is to create a Legion botnet. The Legion defeats a Phalanx every time.

    At least watching this in action would be cooler than playing Rome: Total War.

  3. My botnet.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    can beat up your botnet

  4. Re:I've always wondered... by ShiNoKaze · · Score: 2, Funny

    Psh, if they're so benign they can't be that smart... It's the Evil genius that gets all the credit.

  5. awwww by umbl3r · · Score: 5, Funny

    aww reminds me of the days that if you tried to probe a bot server it tried to launch a DOS attack on you. had many hours of fun spoofing a nmap of a bot server's ip and watch the servers take each other out.. man i laughed for days watching bots attack each other.. aw the good-ol days.

  6. Re:Could we have something like Phalanx@Home? by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Funny

    Calling it Phalanx is lame. It should be called Legion.

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    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  7. Re:I've always wondered... by prennix · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are lots of great things we could do for humanity with your computer. Please send me your login credentials. We'll be glad to let you know what great things we've done with your computer in a few weeks. I'll leave a note on your desktop.

  8. Re:Could we have something like Phalanx@Home? by Ihmhi · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is this where I make a joke about someone getting "kicked" from a server?

    --
    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
  9. Re:I've always wondered... by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Then you'd have a problem with bears in your office. ;)

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