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Researchers Hijack Mebroot Botnet, Study Drive-By Downloads
TechReviewAl writes "Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara hijacked the Mebroot botnet for about a month and used it to study drive-by downloading. The researchers managed to intercept Mebroot communications by reverse-engineering the algorithm used to select domains to connect to. Mebroot infects legitimate websites and uses them to redirect users to malicious sites that attempt to install malware on a victim's machine. The team, who previously infiltrated the Torpig botnet, found that at least 13.3 percent of systems that were redirected by Mebroot were already infected and 70 percent were vulnerable to about 40 common attacks."
Isn't IE marketshare about 70%? What a coincidence!
Fleur de Sel
so universities can break the law but common criminals can't? remind's me of nazi/japanese experiments on humans in the name of 'science'.
Really? Intercepting a botnet reminds you of experiments leading to the deaths and suffering of thousands of helpless adults and children? No I see your point, exactly the same thing.
I am the lawn!
You mean colleges and universities are held to a double standard? Blasphemy! Next you'll be trying to tell me that politicians and government officials are held to a double standard...
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Strikes me that this is a "crime" somewhat akin to stealing money from a drug dealer. Sure, I guess you are doing something "illegal" since it's not your money, but it's not like the drug dealer is going to report you to the police...
Announcing this activity publicly doesn't strike me as particularly prudent, even if it is valuable information...
Not even that. There is absolutely no personal gain for them in this. Even stealing the money has a gain and this experiment neither hurts nor benefits anybody. It's a completely neutral act not to be trolled into some nonsensical paralell about murder or theft.
I am the lawn!
This is more like intercepting and recording the conversations had among a network of criminals, which yields a lot of good insights into how these organizations operate. This can be extremely valuable information if it's forwarded to appropriate law enforcement personnel, which don't always have the technical talent or resources to conduct investigations like this in the first place.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Leave it to people who exploit pcs to get sloppy enough to leave the kitchen door unlocked. Its more like carjacking a carjacker's own personal vehicle. News or no news, its a ray of sunshine that reminds us that this universe still has a balance. And it's got a sense of humor.
so universities can break the law
They broke the law? Citation needed.
Oh wait... you didn't even RTFA.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Read the article. They didn't gain control of the botnet.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think the same idea came up when this group hijaaked the Torpig net, and quite probably on several other similar occassions. Unfortunately, that opens up a whole new can of worms, if you'll excuse the pun. Specifically, if they issue commands for a botnet to shut itself down, or try to patch a vulnerable system, then they potentially become liable for whatever might go wrong. What if that vulnerable system was responsible for something critical and hadn't been patched because the patch broke the application, for instance? Or if the Botnet's "suicide" command did indeed remove the problem... by completely wiping the hard disk of infected systems?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Yes.
They didn't exactly hijack the botnet. They just hijacked it's reproductive system. RTFA.
It spreads by a javascript which the criminals were able to inject into innocuous sites. This javascript sent visitors to an auto-generated URL which was registered by the botnet owners. This URL hosted the actual exploit which attempted to attack vulnerable visitors who landed there from the javascript. The URL changed every day, but by predicting it, the researchers were able to register domains before the botnet owners. As a result, victims of the drive-by javascript landed on the researchers' server instead of the botnet owners' servers. Needless to say, the researchers didn't attack the visitors and exploit their machines, but they did do some profiling to find out what sort of computers were hitting their server and how many of the visitors were unpatched, vulnerable boxes.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The information gained doesn't benefit them? Why else did they do this, then? Benefit isn't just cash, you know. Anythiing that provides an advantage is a 'benefit'...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States.
I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty.
Civil cases are held to a lower standard, but criminal cases require "beyond a reasonable doubt". In fact, the very reason why he was found not guilty is because the prosecutor could not prove intent in a way that satisfied the indictment. It's extremely difficult to prove intent, the prosecutor was able to show intent to commit the crime several months after the crime was allegedly committed, but because of the wording of the indictment we could not find evidence of intent when the specific events happened. The prosecutor understood why we reached the verdict we did.
That sounds a little vague, I'll be happy to go into details of the trial if you're interested.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It's the principle of the thing. Botnet creators are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy, under the law, right? Besides, if it were YOUR botnet they were infiltrating, you would be pissed, too.
It's more like a private investigation of a crime , finding proof and then making it public.
This is something journalists do all the time.
Slipping shoelaces ?
What if that vulnerable system was responsible for something critical and hadn't been patched because the patch broke the application, for instance?
Ah, I've seen you've read the Admin Handbook: "Even if your critical system has been compromized and is a zombie in some malicious botnet, do not patch the vulnerability if the patch might compromise your critical system."
/sarcasm
yes, if it's not broken, don't fix it... then again, your definition of broken appears to be broken
The Admin and the Engineer
They violated the DRM placed on the legally copyrighted software produced by bot net authors. They committed a US federal felony according to the DMCA.
Often, these bot nets are designed to install software for commission. The company paying the commission should be held accountable. They can play dumb and claim that they didn't know it was being installed in this manner, sure. But it would be fairly simple to make it so the installed software makes itself known to the user. It would be fairly simple to make it easy to un-install as well.
I know there are ways around it. But, it'd be great to see the companies selling the products that are making revenue to be accountable. They are enabling it. And they know it.
This liability excuse sounds like bullshit. Who is liable for a zombie? Let's do a little metaphor:
Rob Zombiemaster is robbing a bank. During the robbery, in a failed attempt to stop it, a guard shoots and misses Zombiemaster and hits the bank president in the head, killing him instantly, but also causing him to drop his cigarette into some flammable solvent someone was working with in the vicinity. The bank goes up in flames and burns down the whole block, killing everyone except Rob Zombiemaster and the guard. Zombiemaster escapes clean, with the money, and never killed anyone. The guard tells the authorities the tragic truth about his actions.
With whom does the liability for this catastrophe lay? With the guard? He did kill his boss and everyone on the block except the robber, so that's a reasonable assumption, though wrong. The liability for the deaths and property destruction still rests squarely on the shoulders of the wily Rob Zombiemaster, who, upon capture, will promptly be charged with multiple counts of murder long before he's charged with mere bank robbery. The guard gets off scott free.
Those lawyers sound more like lazy CIO's, but with no law degree, and less balls.
The Admin and the Engineer
There have been studies on how far people travel daily/weekly/monthly. To do so, the study used thousands of people's locations based on cellphones. The participants of the study were fully unaware that they were being tracked for months. At least this one isn't scary...
Think of all the illegal copies of windows....now imagine that overnight they were to offer a special deal for those with an illegal copy of windows. Buy a license from us for 6months at 50$
rechargeable every 6months after that...atleast everybody and their grandmother would get the first 6 months, get their updates, be rid of 90% of viruses and problems, getting rid of 3/4 of the botnets out in the wild, and then when it came to the next 6motnhs, Microsoft would have made their money already, the people will probably revert back to being non legal, with no ill effects, except for those talked into keeping their copies legit for further patches. The people that did buy legal copies would not have anything to bitch about, as these were not legit copies and revert back to being bad people...which most owning a legit copy do not want to be branded...
everybody wins.
I didn't say "don't fix the issue", just that there are occassions where you can't immediately apply a patch, no matter how desirable it might be. Sadly this scenario does happen from time to time and particularly so with enterprise applications, where "enterprise" is defined as "very expensive software with only a comparatively small number of customers and an even smaller group of developers". It's not just expensive, non-COTS applications either. Case in point Microsoft's DLL Hell v2.0 issue. Equally, it's not just a Windows issue; some time ago I had a business critical manufacturing application segfault when attempts were made to run it under an updated version of the Linux Kernel on a test box. Unfortunately said Kernel was released to address a rather trivial exploit and we had to try and mitigate the risk as best as possible while waiting for the vendor to fix the problem.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty
That's true of theft, and any other crime where "mens rea" is a criminal element. There are crimes of strict liability as well, and "mens rea" (a guilty mind) does not enter into guilt or innocence. (It can enter into sentencing)
After all, I am strangely colored.
+5 Insightful really? To legally intercept and record conversations of suspected criminals in the USA you need a judge to issue a fucking warrant. I am not a lawyer but I don't think I need to be to make that statement. (Oh and please don't try and quote Patriot Act shit on this, it will just make me laugh)
No, you DON'T need a warrant to record private conversations of suspected criminals (or anybody), unless you are a government official acting in a capacity of law enforcement.
Private citizens can record whatever the hell they want, unless there are specific laws against it. Some states require every party to consent to recording conversations. Many do not.
After all, I am strangely colored.
They have some serious cojones to be messing with dangerous organised criminals. Good on 'em and I hope they keep fighting the good fight -- and not come unstuck. They are stepping on the toes of some seriously ugly, violent people.
How about that?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
It was a case where one guy was buying a car from another guy, paid for it, and never got it. There was no evidence which showed that the seller intended to keep the money and the car at the time the money changed hands. So, according to the indictment he did not steal the money. They showed intent several months later when he modified the car (you wouldn't modify a car unless you considered it yours), but the indictment clearly stated that he was being charged for theft by intending to deprive the buyer of his property (money) when he took the payment, not several months down the line whenever he decided to keep the car. If the state had worded the indictment differently so that we could establish intent at a later date then he would have been found guilty.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Richard Kemmerer, one of the authors, gave a Tech Talk at Google titled "How to Steal a Botnet and What Can Happen When You Do." The video of the talk is available on YouTube.
Without the details of their research methodology at hand, you have no basis for claiming they might have committed a crime.
Maybe if/when they publish their paper, you can reasonably assess that, not until then.
It's not a crime. It's a specious theory that the code the botnet authors utilize might somehow be viewed by the court as a technical measure that effectively controls access to or ability to copy a work, and that the researchers did circumvent those controls under 1201(a)(1)(A) of the DMCA.
The belief that the malware can be considered a "publication" is in doubt. The software is non-creative, non-beneficial.
But you have forgotten (j) Security Testing. - (2) Permissible acts of security testing. - Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), it is not a violation of that subsection for a person to engage in an act of security testing, if such act does not constitute infringement under this title or a violation of applicable law other than this section, including section 1030 of title 18 and those provisions of title 18 amended by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
And also, S1204(b) (b) Limitation for Nonprofit Library, Archives, Educational Institution, or Public Broadcasting Entity.â" Subsection (a) shall not apply to a nonprofit library, archives, educational institution, or public broadcasting entity (as defined under section 118 (g).[1]
Also, failure to register as required by S 407(a), has an effect: 1208 S 408(f)(4)... If you don't register the work within 3 months of publication, you lose the right to most infringement actions, except a 106A(a) infringement (infringement of author's right to attribution and integrity).
So by failing to register, the author loses a lot of rights.