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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. 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. 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?

    --
    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    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 ChenLiWay · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's been done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welchia with mixed results.

    3. 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
    4. Re:I've always wondered... by witherstaff · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I remember one of my boxes was compromised in the 90s through a POP3 exploit. The kid patched the hole after he gave himself an ssh account. He poked around the pr0n site hosted on it, then sent me a talk request to tell me what he did. I miss the old days of polite crackers.

  3. Re:What kind of mental cripple thinks this shit up by zedlander · · Score: 5, Informative
    From TFA:

    Their system, called Phalanx, uses its own large network of computers
    Chill the flip out, man. They're not taking over your computer.
  4. 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.

  5. Re:What kind of mental cripple thinks this shit up by whm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did you even read the summary?

    It's not an offense, it's a defense. A protected server has all traffic routed to members of large cluster of helper machines (the "good botnet"). The protected server then contacts and collects the content as it is able. Instead of a DDOS attack being able to shovel data down on the target, the data is distributed to the cluster of helper machines. The recipient server then deals with the traffic at a pace it is able.

    The article is short, but it kind of sounds like each node in the "good botnet" is serving as a sort of per-connection proxy to the destination server.

    Maybe that clarifies things a bit?

  6. 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

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

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

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  7. 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.