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New Mega-Botnet Discovered
yahoi writes "According to the DarkReading article, 'Researchers have discovered a major botnet operating out of the Ukraine that has infected 1.9 million machines, including large corporate and government PCs mainly in the US. The botnet, which appears to be larger than the infamous Storm botnet was in its heyday, has infected machines from some 77 government-owned domains — 51 of which are in the US government. Researchers from Finjan who found the botnet say it's controlled by six individuals, and includes machines in major banks.'"
Can they fix the government? Infect AIG and get our money back?
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
large corporate and government PCs
So small ones are mostly safe.
THL phish sticks
From the article:
Around 45 percent of the bots are in the U.S., and the machines are Windows XP.
On the other hand:
Nearly 80 percent run Internet Explorer; 15 percent, Firefox; 3 percent, Opera; and 1 percent Safari
What else does one expect? Since it is an infection spread through trojans on legitimate sites and XP the target, what can we expect the browser to do?
In the end, we might see all browsers running completely sandboxed on demand, that is: no interaction with the rest of the system; a 'browse-only' kiosk.
Get Abby & the whole NCIS crew on the job. Everyone know a goth hacker chick will solve it!
Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
Then what would people use to download and upload files? Would FTP come back into style?
I already use a program called SandBoxie after seeing it mentioned on /.
You can either allow files to escape the sandbox on a case by case basis or setup default allows wherever you like.
And as a general comment, it's terribly easy to allow files into a sandbox, like when you want to upload something, but not allow any changes out.
P.S. FTP server/client software has terrible security. Even the most popular ones, which have been around for over a decade, still get hit with remote exploits.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder if the AVG product they were using was the freeware version or one of the commercial products...
I think it's great that they find this kind of stuff but at the same time I have some misgivings about how they don't do much to point the public in the right direction as far as finding out if they're infected or what they can do to remedy the situation. It seems that a lot of security articles are lean on providing the details about helping yourself to a more secure system.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's just "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine".
Now with more Bot to boost your immune system!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think it is more widespread. I'll take my local bank as an example. I stop by to make a deposit, I notice the teller minimizing her facebook page as I glanced at the screen.
I am shocked that a bank would allow any www access on a machine that has direct access to accounts. Dollars to donuts there is some form of malware on that machine, or already throughout their network.
It was my belief that competent IT would only allow the necessary Intranet infrastructure to run the banks applications. But I would bet their policies get changed by ignorant management that are sold on 'security' appliances and software to protect themselves while granting www access.
How can we expect to clean up the botnets if the hosts are never contacted. I may think I am clean, but if I unknowingly lack the skills to know better, I would never know better, and would never do better. The big papers detailing botnets never provide enough details to know if *I* screwed up the internet.
20 characters max for the password? How will I use my favorite poems as passwords?
A computer worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users blitheringly stupid enough to still think Windows is not ridiculously and unfixably insecure by design.
Despite many years' warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying "COME AND GET IT."
Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. "Don't they trust us?" sobbed marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.
Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. "There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.
"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."
"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."
Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The data was not lost from military systems, it was obtained by crackers who penetrated military contractor's commercial systems. Yes, that leads to a whole bunch of questions and is not by any means an absolution of the military's IT security. But your statement does not match the facts.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
The data was not classified, just FOUO. Electronic copies exist for convince sake. It depends on the project, but there is usually no requirements for encryption of such documents. Expect that to change... soon.