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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."

12 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. What kind of mental cripple thinks this shit up? by Chas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    NO!

    NO NO NO NO!

    However you slice it, even if this "friendly" botnet is performing some beneficial task (such as kacking a bad botnet that's infected my machine), it's STILL bad!

    It's accessing and carrying out tasks on my machine without my express permission.

    HELL FUCKING NO!

    This is NOT a "lesser of two evils" choice here. BOTH choices (malicious botnet or "beneficial" botnet) are evil, PERIOD!

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  2. I've always wondered... by neokushan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always wondered why botnets always seemed to be created by black hats. I think it'd be cool to have a competition where some whitehats try to exploit a vulnerability in some software in order to patch it FROM that vulnerability.
    Even if it just forced a windows update, it'd still be quite useful, but it seems nobody with the skills to pull off such a feat can be bothered to do it.
    Surely there's some benign genius out there who could exploit an existing botnet to send it a shutdown command, rather akin to how captain Picard defeated the Borg after he was captured by them, once again proving that Star Trek has given us great insight into the future and, of course, that Picard is better than Kirk will ever be?

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    1. Re:I've always wondered... by CogDissident · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because, a white hat could do it for free, and it'd be cool, but they'd risk being sued into a smoking crater if they told anyone.

      By contrast, a black hat, stands to make thousands and thousands of dollars by just exploiting that vulnerability.

      Which would you choose? Honestly?

    2. Re:I've always wondered... by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not to mention that using someone's computer without their permission is unethical. Black hats don't have to bother with ethics or morals.

      GP: Even if it just forced a windows update

      The first Windows update after I installed XP hosed my network drivers. If I hadn't given permission for that update I'd have seen a lawyer about the matter.

      If you don't have permission to be in a computer STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT. It's unethical, it's illegal, and it's BAD MANNERS.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    3. Re:I've always wondered... by Orinthe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I seem to remember that back when the Blaster worm was a big deal, someone did just this. Thing is, everyone complained and said it was terrible and irresponsible to patch peoples' computers without their permission, potentially causing instability, especially in the enterprise where patches have to be thoroughly vetted before being applied, even if they are for critical vulnerabilities. Someone else pointed this out, too, with an appropriate link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welchia

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    4. Re:I've always wondered... by Torvaun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He didn't say he would have sued Microsoft, he said he would have called a lawyer. Microsoft was never specified as the target of said lawyer. Basically, he's saying that if someone breaks his computer without permission, he's holding them liable, even if they were trying to be helpful.

      --
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  3. Re:What kind of mental cripple thinks this shit up by GroeFaZ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Uhm hyperventilating much? This is /. after all and we don't need to RTFA, but please at least cut down the unwarranted profanity. FTA:

    "Rather than using an ill-gotten botnet, Phalanx would use the large networks of computers which companies currently use to serve massive amounts of content," says team member Colin Dixon."

    Flame where warranted, but please, please, don't rely on /. summaries to form your opinion. *sigh*.

    --
    The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
  4. Re:show me the money by zedlander · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Heck, I do it for free.

  5. Could we have something like Phalanx@Home? by vivin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like Seti@Home or Folding@home? We could have people sign up and join the Phalanx network. Or create a similar "open" network? People could then sign up for the service. I guess you could make it to where when you sign up, your computer becomes part of the network, and is also protected by the network. I don't know how feasible this is... just throwing out ideas.

    --
    Vivin Suresh Paliath
    http://vivin.net

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    1. Re:Could we have something like Phalanx@Home? by raddan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Good idea, but you'd want to make sure that Phalanx@Home is a securely-written (e.g., privilege-separated, full-paranoia input validation, all passed communication is unreadable by the node, etc...) application so that it cannot be taken over by a 'bad' botnet operator. Otherwise, thanks for the botnet, UDub!

  6. Re:Future of Botnets by Thelasko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I doubt you would actually get protection by joining a good botnet. The bad botnet will likely attack the good botnet and take out at least a few of the machines (temporarily). A machine in a good botnet is about as secure as any given fish in a school of fish.

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  7. stupid idea is stupid. by discogravy · · Score: 3, Insightful
    well, sure, every single other time someone made a "good" virus to patch holes that "bad" viruses exploited, it didn't work out and in fact became a bigger problem than the original virus, but since this is about *distributed* botnets -- waaaaaayyyy more than just one or two infected machines -- *THIS* time it'll work perfectly.

    Further reading: http://www.people.frisk-software.com/~bontchev/papers/goodvir.html

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