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Twitter Used To Control Botnet Machines

DikSeaCup writes "Arbor Network's Jose Nazario, an expert on botnets, discovered what looks to be the first reported case of hackers using Twitter to control botnets. 'Hackers have long used IRC chat rooms to control botnets, and have continually used clever technologies, such as peer-to-peer strategies, to counter efforts to track, disrupt and sometimes decapitate the bots. Perhaps what's surprising then is that it's taken so long for hackers to take Twitter to the dark side.' The next step, of course, is to code the tweets in such a way that they aren't so suspicious."

3 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Reliable by Marillion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Twitter isn't as reliable as IRC.

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  2. Re:Alas, Babylon by clone53421 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's actually an interesting thought... it was sending obfuscated URLs to code that the zombie bots would download and execute.

    Wouldn't it make sense, rather than having Twitter simply kill the account, to allow the "good" guys to craft some sort of zombie-self-destruct and tweet its URL over the account? Imagine, all the bots automatically downloading and executing a specially designed tool that removes the malicious trojan...

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    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  3. Re:Holy shit! by Korin43 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So basically we need email, but with a 150 character limit?