Autonomous Intelligent Botnets Bouncing Back

coomaria writes "Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died? Well, think again: compromised computers were responsible for distributing 83.4% of the 107 billion spam messages sent around the world every single day this year, and it's going to get worse if intelligent and autonomous botnets arrive in 2010 as predicted."

Comments

What OS?

[Jurily]

Any data on how much of those are running Windows?

Re:What OS?

[Mattskimo]

My guess would be somewhere in the region of all of them.

Re:What OS?

[Dan East]

Windows is on around 90% of general-purpose computing devices, so I would expect at least 90% of compromised machines would be running Windows.

Re:What OS?

[Aeros]

I doubt ALL of them...but definitely MOST of them.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically all of them.

Even with the increase in popularity of Mac OS X and Linux, malware for those systems is virtually unheard of. There was the recent malware incident involving some GNOME screensavers, but that's more a testament to the poor development practices of the GNOME project.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows is on around 90% of general-purpose computing devices, so I would expect at least 90% of compromised machines would be running Windows"

What are the numbers per server. Where are the other ten percent ?

Re:What OS?

[NoYob]

It wouldn't be such a problem if MS would have something like Linux where you have to jump through a hoop to run the box as 'root' AKA 'Admin' and if the OEMs would put a user account on their machines by default.

Speaking as my family's IT support guy, everyone insists running as Admin - just the way their box was set up by the OEM - and they constantly are getting viruses and trojans. My brother-in-law gets Koobface every other month it seems, I set him up with a user account with Firefox and told him to use that account for everything except installing software. Does he listen? Nope. He had this idea that Firefox was all he needed to be safe.

I hope he learned his lesson. He got Koobface again and his father wiped his machine and re-installed Windows - he lost a bunch of photos and stuff he wanted to keep - oh well.

Re:What OS?

[sakdoctor]

As a Windows vs "All the others" thread progresses, someone will eventually make the statement that Mac OS or Linux would be equally affected if they had dominant market share.
I'd be more inclined to separate OS into "Administrator by default" and "User level account by default". That means Microsoft's latest offerings get grouped with Mac OS and Linux because they have made pretty decent improvements.

When I used to run XP, I ran as Admin. I shouldn't have, but that is just the way that system was designed, unless you really really fight against it.
I would postulate that this black and white thinking isn't the answer. More secure OS out of the box is going to reduce the problem to some extent, even though some users will shoot themselves in the foot, as they always have.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

but that's more a testament to the poor development practices of the GNOME project.

Its actually more a testament to the fact that malware can be written for any OS.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

An alternative suggestion for your brother-in-law:

Don't be friends with anyone who is likely to say "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street", or "My friend catched you on hidden cam".
If your brother-in-law specifically identifies with those friends, because it is something he himself might say, then he's going on the B ship with the telephone sanitizers.

Re:What OS?

[Mattskimo]

I guess someone, somewhere is probably running a compromised virtual machine in WINE. One would hope deliberately.

Re:What OS?

[Rennt]

I would be surprised if anything less then 100% of zombies run Windows.

Think about what would be involved in setting up and maintaining a heterogeneous botnet. Why even bother?

Re:What OS?

[wadeal]

So your comparing an almost 9 year old OS to new OS' from other companies?

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if you actually READ his post he is saying that everyone else is comparing XP to OSX and Linux. He is clearly saying that MS has made pretty decent improvements since then and he is correct in that statement. It would be interesting to see what percentage of bots vs. percentage of market share of the various Windows flavors. I'd hazard a guess that, even correcting for percentage market share, that it would show XP was by far the highest percent compromised.

Re:What OS?

[thisnamestoolong]

Wow, reading comprehension FAIL

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

>When I used to run XP, I ran as Admin. I shouldn't have, but that is just the way that system was designed, unless you really really fight against it

Really, I tend to do it myself, but nothing stops me from configuring a complete non admin user on my machine and using that one when surfing the web or doing things like listening to music.
To install softwares, you log in as admin, install and delog, to use the app you log as user without admin permission.

I think your ignorance is clouding your judgement.

ps- I would also force a redo password selection every 30 days for admin account as it is very important that it stays in rotation, in case someone has been able to figure it out.

Re:What OS?

[Rennt]

It is more testament to the damage that can be done by poorly trained users on any system, no matter how secure.

Windows is still somewhat responsible here, mainly because using Windows is what made these users so poorly trained in the first place. It engenders this user attitude that installing crappy toy applications downloaded from random websites a reasonable thing to do.

Re:What OS?

[daid303]

For more statistics ask:

Any data on how much of those contain pirated music?
Any data on how much of those have used google?
Any data on how much of those have had a male user in there whole lifetime?

Correlation does not imply causation. Yes, many of the machines (if not all) run windows, but that does not have to mean that Windows is less secure then Linux/BSD/MacOS. Until one of those gets enough market share we will never know for sure which of those is more secure as an OS.

I know it's not a popular statement to make on /. so start modding me down!

Re:What OS?

[maxume]

The deeper issue with XP is that the vendor culture is to expect to run with lots of rights, it isn't that big a deal to setup a user account, and there is 'runas'.

Re:What OS?

[Mattskimo]

At the risk of stating the obvious, the percentage of compromised users running a particular OS will be a function of market share, ease of infection/spread, available coding knowledgebase and probably a whole host more. I'm going to guess if you're going to hire a team of professional coders to write a botnet then you're going to have at least a rudimentry grasp of the factors involved. I'm willing to bet that windows 3.1 is full of security holes that could be exploted, the reason that noone does is that almost noone is running it anymore. The same could be said for various flavours of Linux, even if there was a security flaw that would enable 100% of users of say, freeBSD (lol) to potentially become infected, it would still be arguably more time/cost effective to write code for XP. I would imagine that the spammers also take into account that Linux users tend to be a little more computer-savvy and are more likely to realise their machine is infected and take remedial steps, reducing the overall uptime of any possible botnet. This is all pulled out of my ass while I'm supposed to be working, I'm sure that the people that do this for a living have thought about it much harder and have accurate weighting on each variable.

Re:What OS?

[vegiVamp]

That's wat they call a honeypot ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing) ).

Re:What OS?

[obijuanvaldez]

Whoa! Microsoft should create something to make people jump through hoops to get Admin privileges? Great idea! Maybe they could call it something like User Account Control. Man, if only those dudes in Redmond read /.

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

I agree we ned better info on which distro of xp is compromised vs. which other types, however, you are forgetting the biggest factor in this euqation. Piracy!
Windowsxp Pro was the best windows out so far (except server versions)

And of windowsxp pro out there, of which we say 90% of compromised machines is windowsxp, what percentage of those are pirated, not being able to download updates,
etc....care to venture a guess?

I would say 90% as well...(my estimate). Not many people like NOT using windows, however fewer still like to pay for it! So disclude all pirated copies as those are not legal copies and can not be counted on for a proper estimate of secure OS (as no updates = insecure) are responsible for compromised machines, and that number drops down really low!!!

Don't get me started on the topic of pirated versions not being real versions....we all know the warez includes all sorts of preinstalled malwae on those iso versions you download from torrents. So to include them in a stats call would be like saying we know all the modified cars out there with the chips allowing the cars to go 300km an hour are possible, so we will include them when getting stats of how many speed related accidents are out there for our model brand car....they would laugh at you, so why do it for softwares.

If M$ was intelligent, they would include free updates EVEN for pirated copies of their softwares, why?...because popularity wins everytime (just watch american idol to see what I mean). If you are allowing these copies to continue, then people will want even more windows based softwares and be pushing their windows ideas to all their non computer firends, starting them down a M$ path they will never be able to leave....(sort of like a woman going black and never coming back!) I tend to think it would be a great move to improve overall security online, as well as push your market share back up for being 1) friendly to users who like your product but normally would not spend that much to use it, and 2) moving ads into the updates as they are rolling, to cover the loss of those revenues you cherish. The ad space would cost equal to how much you needed to make , also could move to push your newer windows 7 still, showing then newer os functions etc....they are just too dumb for their own good.

Re:What OS?

[FlyingBishop]

That means Microsoft's latest offerings get grouped with Mac OS and Linux because they have made pretty decent improvements.

In theory yes. In fact, Window's latest offerings are only protected from programs targeted at older versions of the OS. If you're targeting Windows 7 explicitly, it's actually fairly easy to get escalated privileges.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry, bud. Wine isn't a virtual machine nor does it house one.

Re:What OS?

[Lord Ender]

I doubt that. I've caught viral botnets that spread via weak SSH passwords. They scan for port 22, try "root/root" and "guest/guest" etc. until they go through their entire username/password dictionary file, then they move on to the next host...

Once they pwn a box, they of course connect out to IRC or whatever to start hosting warez (or whatever else their masters desire). And they continue scanning for 22 and cracking when they see it...

Congrats to the Ubuntu team for disabling ssh by default. You can't get a more secure desktop system than that. But there are datacenters and datacenters full of improperly configured unix servers out there.

Re:What OS?

[MrNaz]

Yea, you're right. Botnets are homo.

Re:What OS?

[rxmd]

My guess would be somewhere in the region of all of them.

Make that "most of them". OS X botnets have been appearing for a while, and other forms of OS X malware have been known for quite some time.

While many of these pieces of malware are fairly lame, I'd expect more and more "professional" variants of those in the future. One factor that shouldn't be overlooked is the generally complacent attitude of non-Windows users towards the security of their own machines (not unlike what you exhibit in your own post). In other words, from a technical point of view, if users download a malware-infested key generator and enter a password to execute it, it's pretty much irrelevant whether it's for OS X or for Windows. Arguably in this scenario, OS X is actually slightly more likely to be infected, since many Windows computers have at least some form of anti-virus software installed, while on other platforms this is still fairly rare.

Re:What OS?

[Tim C]

One of my friends used to run a Linux server at hone, a couple of years ago.

One day on MSN we were chatting, and he told me about how his server had been rooted. Turns out he'd not kep up to date on his patches, and a vulnerable service had been compromised.

But you're right, Windows is the only OS vulnerable to remote attacks.

Re:What OS?

[socrplayr813]

I'm sure there are plenty of people running compromised virtual machines, but if they're using WINE, it's not really a virtual machine...

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be surprised if anything less then 100% of zombies run Windows.

Be surprised.

Re:What OS?

[Svartalf]

Actually... That's not a foregone conclusion.

Anti-virus software HAS to have signatures, etc. of the malware to detect/remove it- if it's new, you're going to get zapped by it and it'll lurk for at least a while during the time they find out about it and sort out how to find and remove it safely (if possible...). It's more akin to closing the barn door after the horses have all gone out. It doesn't really make the machine more secure. Secure is not getting compromised in the first place.

The truth of the matter is that "ease of use" will always come at the cost of security. As long as you allow auto-execute, auto-launch, auto-whatever for the ease of use by someone, there's going to be a not-so-small positive risk of infection/compromise of a machine. Doesn't matter if it's Linux, MacOS, Windows, or whatever. One of the reasons Linux is slightly more resilient than MacOS in this regard is there's less of that sort of crap. Correspondingly, Windows is the least secure of the three for the aforementioned reason, coupled with poor security design (putting "robust" security (which it has some...) on top of something that wasn't really designed with it in mind isn't a good way of going about it...).

Re:What OS?

[vistapwns]

A failing of MS users, not MS. In Vista this hole did not exists, but thanks to the millions of whiny idiots who complained about being prompted by UAC "every 2 seconds", MS had to whitelist its applications. So now they get prompted 2 times a day, instead of 4, and they're open to security threats, but they saved 2 clicks of the OK button! So they're happy. Like I said, retarded users, and MS has no choice but to give users what they want or it risks losing a mass of customers to other OSes. It's already losing Market Share as it is. However, it takes 2 seconds to change the UAC setting to "always notify" which defeats this hole, also this hole can not be exploited from exploited browsers that use Windows integrity levels to do sandboxing, like IE and Chrome. (If you want to rag someone about blaring security holes, when the f*ck is Firefox going to get integrity level sandboxing on Windows like IE has had for 3+ years?)

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine is not a VM. You could run the malware directly in Wine.

Re:What OS?

[NoYob]

Whoa! Microsoft should create something to make people jump through hoops to get Admin privileges? Great idea! Maybe they could call it something like User Account Control. Man, if only those dudes in Redmond read /.

Yeah, good one. But the User account control isn't adequate - obviously. How many typical Windows users who get their machines that start up right with the Admin account even know about the User Account Control? Windows does have plenty of features to protect the machine, but no one is using them because they don't know about them.

With Linux, you must create a user account and if you try to login as root - which isn't an obvious choice put in front of the user, btw, you get warning boxes stating that you will be taking on quite a bit of risk. Or stated another way, with Linux, admin account access isn't as easy or obvious as it is with Windows. Windows is capable of that but it's not being implemented. With most Windows installs the Admin account is the default logon and most users don't know what risks they're taking because of it.

Now, considering that the typical PC owner uses their computer as an appliance and are not interested or (mistakenly) concerned with user rights, I think at the very least, the OEMs should put a default user account in Windows systems with at least one hoop to jump through for admin access.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really that simple. A compromise doesn't need to have root access to be an effective bot. It does help, of course, but it's not a requirement.

A non-root bot still needs a way of getting onto the computer and getting executed, but non-root users do have permission to create executable files and run them. Non-root bots also obviously have perfectly good access to the network, so are quite capable of sending spam.

What a non-root bot can't do is compromise the integrity of the operating system itself, which means it's harder for it to disguise itself, but don't fool yourself into thinking you can't be running a bot because you don't run as root.

Re:What OS?

[Mattskimo]

You're right. I should have written "I guess someone, somewhere is probably running a compromised virtual machine or running the code in WINE." That being said, although WINE isn't a virtual machine, for everyday purposes it looks like a duck and goes "quack"...

Re:What OS?

[ultranova]

I would also force a redo password selection every 30 days for admin account as it is very important that it stays in rotation, in case someone has been able to figure it out.

So the admin either picks easy to remember and thus likely weak passwords, or writes them down somewhere. Bad idea.

Besides, if someone figurs out the admin password, they're going to do whatever nefarious schemes they were planning instantly. It doesn't matter if you change the password again later; the spambot/rootkit/whatever has already been installed.

Re:What OS?

[obijuanvaldez]

So, did you read the linked article, like, at all?

With most Windows installs the Admin account is the default logon and most users don't know what risks they're taking because of it. *

* - bold emphasis mine
In the article, which dates to the introduction of Vista and carries through 7, you might find the section entitled "Built-in Administrator Account is Disabled by Default on New Installations" to be of some interest. Now once you look into that, another section that may be helpful is "All Subsequent User Accounts are Created as Standard Users." Now while the users may not be aware of UAC, the section "UAC is Enabled by Default" might also provide some insight for you. By reading further into "Access Token Changes" you'll discover that even when logged in as a built-in Administrator, applications still run with a filtered, i.e. limited access, security token by default.

Seriously, I understand that User Account Control is not necessarily without it it's flaws and detractors. Namely, amny users find it nagging and a general PITA. But to contend that Windows has no such mechanism is either being dishonest or really to not know what you are talking about.

Re:What OS?

[jonbryce]

In the web server market, linux has a larger market share than windows, yet windows still has more viruses.

Re:What OS?

[Jesse_vd]

every copy of XP, pirated or not, can install security updates

Re:What OS?

[Rennt]

My main point was really about homogeneous botnets, so the link bears that out.

As far as the 100% Windows bit goes - I'm happy to concede that this is not technically correct, if you'll allow that that 20,000 zombie Macs is not statistically relevant.

Re:What OS?

[PPalmgren]

True, but if Firefox has shown us anything in recent years, it has shown us that marketshare makes you a target. Even with their relatively low penetration (compared to Windows), you can clearly see a correlation in # of vulnerabilities/exploits discovered vs. increased market share. Yes, the number is minor compared to Windows vulnerabilities, but it still proves the statement in your post partially true.

Re:What OS?

[JWSmythe]

    The discussion is the botnets, and I haven't seen any running on Linux. Those are more of one-off, defacing attacks, or somewhere to run an IRC bot. If you intend on running a botnet for spamming, Windows users are the best targets. They'll click on almost anything, and once the malware is on, the user may complain about their machine going slow, but won't do anything about it.

    Some of them are nasty. I keep a Windows machine laying around just to try particular things. I got some malware on it (I was doing bad things). It was about 5 seconds between the time I tried what I was doing, and the time I yanked the network cable out. The antivirus didn't catch it. Others that I scanned with couldn't find all of it. I spent the next two days trying to get it out. That was the first time that I ever had to wipe out and reinstall on a Windows machine to get rid of a piece of malware. It's not that I didn't know what I was doing. I've been doing this kind of thing for well over a decade now. I never did identify the problem child, so I can't even say what it was. It just made the machine almost impossible to use. Well, unless waiting 5 to 10 minutes to select a user and enter a password is acceptable, and another 10 to get to the desktop. I know during that period, it was re-propagating the tag-along malwares.

    That one piece of malware brough along 40 unique friends in a matter of seconds. It infected files. It infected the MBR. It hooked into everywhere I looked. I knew it was a problem, which is why I took it offline immediately. Most users would leave it plugged in and running, and wait for someone to come fix it.

    At least I'm not dependent on the Windows machine working. How many home users have their dependable Linux machine that they do work on, and the Windows machine sitting to the side to play with?

Re:What OS?

[obijuanvaldez]

It should be noted this code does not actually work on the actual Windows 7 release versions. It was proof-of-concept code targeting an early RC build.

Re:What OS?

[maxume]

The underlying security model of NT based operating systems is entirely sufficient in the context of a user workstation.

Re:What OS?

[vistapwns]

Do you have anything to support the claim that RTM is not affected? Because as far as I know, RTM does things the same way.

Re:What OS?

[FreelanceWizard]

Many applications written for XP assume the running user is a member of the Administrators group. In general, the biggest issues were:

1. Writing to something in %programfiles% (games in particular were bad about this)
2. Writing to something in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Both of these are secured locations in Vista and 7 and sometimes were, but not always, in XP. That's why Vista had things like application file and registry virtualization to redirect writes to secure locations to safe, per-user locations. There's also issues, especially with XP, with tasks that shouldn't necessarily require Admin or UAC elevation but did anyway with GPOs -- such as changing the time zone.

Much of this has been cleared up between Virtual XP Mode and improvements in the required rights in 7, so it's far less of an issue than it was before. Of course, a Virtual XP Mode VM can still be rooted, but it, at least, can be easily obliterated or rolled back with an Undo Disk.

Re:What OS?

[MobyDisk]

I see no reason that these botnet apps would not run perfectly fine as a non-administrator. They could install into the local users directory. They don't need any special access. Maybe Windows Firewall would stop them unless the admin allowed the app to connect out. In that case, Linux and OS X would actually be MORE vulnerable since those OSs don't ship with a firewall by default.

Re:What OS?

[AlXtreme]

The discussion is the botnets, and I haven't seen any running on Linux. Those are more of one-off, defacing attacks, or somewhere to run an IRC bot. If you intend on running a botnet for spamming, Windows users are the best targets.

I have. Over the recent years I've seen many automated attacks that target a range of IP addresses, searching for vulnerable SSH accounts, Apache installs with old PHP crapware and various other vulnerabilities. 9 times out of 10 they will start IRC bots or another process that phones home and the botnet operator can use them as he pleases. An IRC bot is not the goal, it is a means to control many such compromised servers at once.

Think that running Linux makes you invulnerable? It doesn't. Linux servers are vulnerable if only due to the large amounts of unmaintained boxes out there. A compromised Linux box is much more useful to a botnet operator than a Windows box, simply because the former will stay online 24/7 and is likely on a high-speed network.

There are companies out there that sell pre-loaded Linux boxes to SMB's as a black-box, not understanding that without maintenance or a proper firewall those boxes will be compromised within a few years. The SMB employees wonder why their network connection is so slow, blaming their computers, while the compromised box pumps out spam as fast as it can... *shiver*

Linux, Windows, BSD or OS X: be vigilant, install updates regularly and check your security.

Re:What OS?

[DigiShaman]

To install softwares, you log in as admin, install and delog, to use the app you log as user without admin permission.

I think your ignorance is clouding your judgement.

Speaking of ignorance, clearly you don't admin XP boxes. Because if you did, you know damn well that many many applications will not run properly (if at all) unless the user is a member of the local Administrators group. And NO, restricting yourself to just the Power Users group is not enough.

Yes, Microsoft dropped the ball here and there, but I put the blame on 3rd party software not coded for basic User accounts.

Re:What OS?

[malkir]

100% agree. I work at a major web hosting company and this is a huge problem. You can have the most up-to-date patches, however nothing you do can guarantee the competency of the end user. I see users running a film website with their password at 'films2866', root user available to SSH in, standard SSH port... just take a look at /var/log/secure | grep 'Failed' and you'll see just how many bots are interested. Checking the mail queue often turns up tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pending outgoing emails. We have trouble cleaning them up as fast as we find them. There are stupid end users on Windows, Macs, and Linux. To most people out there who are linux fanboys: just because you can install it doesn't make you a security expert, keep your shit secure and up to date, for my emails sake.

Re:What OS?

[NoYob]

It says nothing of the sort in the linked article. The linked article is only about botnets and has nothing regarding your quoted text.

But to contend that Windows has no such mechanism is either being dishonest or really to not know what you are talking about.

I didn't say Windows didn't have any such mechanisms. Windows does have plenty of features to protect the machine, but no one is using them because they don't know about them.

That's what I said, meaning Windows does have those capabilities.

In short: you lied about the contents of the article. You lied about what I said. You're just messing with me. I don't mind - it was kind of fun.

Cheers! And have a merry Christmas.

Re:What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

And log out and log into the admin account to do other basic tasks that Windows XP is basically fucked in the design for- like to burn a CD you have to be administrator. And then log out and back into the user account. And a ton of programs that require admin access just to run, especially some games.

So no, technically, you don't HAVE to run as admin all the time. You could be a user for a tiny portion of that time and waste a bunch of time logging out and back in every twenty minutes. I'm not sure why you think that wanting to avoid that bullshit indicates ignorance on the part of the GP, especially because you seem to be the ignorant one, assuming that installing software is the only task that requires being an administrator.

Re:What OS?

[Blakey Rat]

When I used to run XP, I ran as Admin. I shouldn't have, but that is just the way that system was designed, unless you really really fight against it.

"The system" wasn't designed that way, and hadn't been since NT4.

"Shitty third-party apps made for Windows 98 and never updated" was your problem. Don't blame Microsoft or Windows.

Re:What OS?

[obijuanvaldez]

OK, sorry for the mix up, I meant the article I had linked. The article I linked does in fact mention all those things. It does mention that new installs by default have the Administrator account disabled. It mentions that User Account Control is on by default. It mentions that even if you are running as a built-in Administrator, the security token used for applications is a filtered one. The point is, they don't even need to know about them, they are on by default. As for whether or not I am lying about what you said let's look at your initial assertion:

It wouldn't be such a problem if MS would have something like Linux where you have to jump through a hoop to run the box as 'root' AKA 'Admin' and if the OEMs would put a user account on their machines by default.

This seems like you are saying that Microsoft should have some sort of User Account Control to limit access to the Administrator account. Conjunctively, you seemed to hope that OEMs would not leave the Administrator on as the only user. The first part seems to be a complaint about the lack of existence of such User Account Controls. The second part seems to be a complaint about the default behavior of New Installations. I hope that the relevant sections of the article that I linked and mentioned ("Built-in Administrator Account is Disabled by Default on New Installations", "All Subsequent User Accounts are Created as Standard Users", "UAC is Enabled by Default", "Access Token Changes") can illustrate to you how your initial assertion was in fact incorrect, particularly the last section which details how even if you are running as a built-in Administrator, the security token used for applications is a filtered, i.e. less privileged one.

In short: I did not lie. I am not messing with you. I was hoping to inform you that your initial assertion was incorrect. I do hope you mind, however, that you were so completely incorrect about something about which you seem to have a strong opinion. Having a strong and wrong opinion may rhyme nicely, it's just not very helpful.

Re:What OS?

[obijuanvaldez]

Oops! Looks like spoke WAY too soon. I am dead wrong. It doesn't work with the UAC setting all the way up, but it DOES in fact work, at least on the Windows 7 x64 I am running, with the default Windows 7 UAC level. So, my bad. I am absolutely incorrect.

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

If I am admin, I will reset my passwords every30 days, because it is easy to do so,
and almost too easy to remember (only dumb people chose easy passwords, like their dogs names)
As for installing quickly a rootkit or what not...yeah I suppose it depends on the assault type
and timetable, but any password at that point is compromised, whether its yours or mine,
so YOU are not further ahead either.

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

No, only windows genuine advantage recognized copies can,
and this triggers shutdown of your machine is pirated.
Trust me, I speak from experience.

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

Of course, ....windows7 (rollseyes), are you getting paid to help promote 7?
I will not upgrade to 7, when I do not need to.
My needs are very simple, and xp does fine to support those needs, thank you.

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

Well, your ignorance is showing here, as I assume, that your assuming my situation would require badly written applications. No, I don't need to install your limewire which needs admin privileges.
So no, I do administrate many xp machines, I just dont let users do stupid things on them, like install any program they choose.

Re:What OS?

[marcosdumay]

I'd be more inclined to separate OS into "Administrator by default" and "User level account by default".

Well, that is a nice dimension, tough not very usefull anymore (as you have stated). A few of other candidades would be: "Executes by mime" (Windows) vs. "Executes by permission" (everybody else), "Filetype by name" (Windows) vs. "Filetype by contents" (everybody else), "Automatic execution of received programs" (Outlook) vs. "Manual execution of received programs" (everybody else), "scripts inside everything" (Windows, MS Office, Internet Explorer, Acrobat reader, software that tries to be compatible with MS Office) vs. "scripts inside executable files" (other OSs, other text editors, free PDF viewers) vs. "sandboxed" (Other browsers, other spreadsheets), "security dialogs every time" (Windows) vs. "security dialogs are always dangerous" (everybody else), and my favorite "doesn't tells the user what the hell is happening" (Windows) vs. "tells the user what the hell is happening" (everybody else). Note that the later one is the cause of voodoo computer usage.

Re:What OS?

[resfilter]

but automatic updates are not disabled by WGA

i was working on a machine yesterday that had failed the WGA check, as soon as it was plugged back into the network, it began downloading security patches.

ironically, most users of pirated copies of windows completely disable automatic updates - for fear that it will "phone home" or install a newer copy of the WGA software that will defeat their cracks/workarounds.

it is access to microsoft's windows update site, as well as some of the material on downloads.microsoft.com that becomes unavailable after a WGA check.

Re:What OS?

[melikamp]

I totally believe this. My ssh server at school would get (felt like) thousands of login attempts per day, usually from several different countries. They are using interesting username lists. They went away after I moved the port, but now I think about bringing them back and doing some stats.

Re:What OS?

[Hasai]

....How many home users have their dependable Linux machine that they do work on, and the Windows machine sitting to the side to play with?

Me.

And my wife (Linux only).

And the folks (Linux only).

Number of trouble calls in the past six months: 1 (parent's modem died)

];)

Re:What OS?

[DigiShaman]

For starters, below is a list of programs that require total or some form of local admin access. You will notice many of them are common real-world business applications in use today. So yes, I *have* to admin machines that require badly written applications to be installed and used on a daily basis. CRM and accounting programs seem to be the worst. Also worth mentioning is geoscience programs such as MapInfo, Global Mapper, Surfer, OIC, SMT Kingdom Suite and just about any program that requires a hardlock USB dongle.

While it may be ideal to have a bullet proof network that's locked down from end to end, it's not going to happen on a shoestring budget. Not this year or the next. That's for damn sure! I guess I should still be lucky to be employed and that companies can afford to pay for my professional services. At least a n00b (such as yourself) would be cheap enough for any company. But you know what they say...you get what your pay for.

http://www.threatcode.com/admin_rights.htm

Re:What OS?

[JWSmythe]

    I agree totally.

    My old shop, we were a very tight operation. I helped other people clean up their problems though. :)

    My last shop? Well.... That's a totally different story. Lets just say that they changed their method of shipping machines to production environments with the root password of "password" after a bad experience. They still hadn't gotten away from the bad habit of leaving SSH on port 22.

Re:What OS?

[WuphonsReach]

Setup a 2nd SSHD daemon, with extremely restrictive settings (such as only letting one specific throw-away username that is a random mix of letters/numbers login).

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

However, we were not talking about you, we were talking about me.
You blasted me and said I was not an admin... I defended my ground, and said I would
never let my users install theses softwares, and as such any REAL admin
would terminal server any of those apps you mention unto a terminal server link
where everyone has to log unto, this is the easiest to maintain and less
resource hungry for individual policies. The fact you did not mention any of this
leads me to believe this is not your set up, and for a company with
over 200 employees, using vmware virtualised center, and terminal server, I would say
I think my kung fu is more powerful then yours. Haaaa.yyyyyah!

Re:What OS?

[hesaigo999ca]

On a seperate note, I have yet another machine that does have the
AU disabled , and was still targeted by WGA, however, I have za installed,
and was able to put a block on that service and dll from running, I imagine
it is only a matter of time before I forget it, and turn off za for xxx reason.
But it is cool to know you can block it with za altogether!

My windows machine that just recently triggered the disable until you phone home wga
crap, had WoW installed, and WoW forced you to create a new battle.net account to use WoW.
I now have a new battle.net.dll on my machine and funny enough, I wonder if this is what forced
the install of the wga and triggered the disable windows function.

I would not put it past M$ to find the most popular gamers tools for accessing their games, and then "behind closed doors" pay off the company to push a malware that reenables these if they are disabled. Would not be the first time, and Battle.net.dll needs admin privs....wonder why!

Re:What OS?

[stuckinphp]

and sometimes it goes "woof"...

compromised computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cutwail, Mega-D, Rustock and handful of other botnets already have control of upwards of five million compromised computers .. Cutwail also distributed the Bredolab Trojan dropper, disguised in the form of a .ZIP file attachment"

What Operating System did these 'compromised computers' run on ?

'Upon execution Bredolab attempts to inject into svchost.exe processes ..

Re:compromised computers ?

[vistapwns]

The 'most popular one.'

an advantage

[bl8n8r]

The military would have an advantage now if they were to brodcast bunk video feeds on that channel.

A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Dystopian Rebel]

Slashdot needs to create a numbered list of arguments called Slashdot's List Of Same Old Arguments (SLOSOA). Then /.ers can save bandwidth (and lower Taco's bills) by disputing by numerical reference to an argument, just as Mennonites are said to argue by reference chapter and verse in the Bible rather than repeating the words.

To start this New Era in Slashdot efficiency, my reply to your post, Sir, is...

19, 20! It is clear that 22, 28.

And if you don't like it, then 42.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea, but they already have a prototype in testing right now. Here is a sample discussion.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

ah go 34 yourself

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[L4t3r4lu5]

The sum of your arguments is 131. As a palindrome, I call your argument circular and self-referencing, which are logical fallacies.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[gzipped_tar]

The checksum of your arguments is df9abc41b28ec3c90688b55369aeefdca6e1c31ea38a387a1dbb64f5c876c224. As a palindrome, I call your argument circular and self-referencing, which are logical fallacies.

T, FTFY.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

L4t3r4lu5 != 5ul4r3t4L

Not much of palindrome to me.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[mcgrew]

And if you don't like it, then 42.

That's not quite precise, sir. I checked the calculations on the Deep Thought computer, and it was quite adament that the answer was in fact exactly forty two point zero. It was quite angry that its answer was never reported accurately.

42.0 FTW! Quite different than showing forty two in binary on your fingers, and a whole lot nicer.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Rennt]

I like this idea. If it could be extended to stories as well it would save even more redundancy. Just imagine...

kdawson writes "dupe-657"

And the link takes you straight to the old discussion thread

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[ciaohound]

20! is indeed more efficient than listing 20*19*18*17...

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[rxmd]

What's "Go Natalie Portman yourself" supposed to mean?

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[thisnamestoolong]

Yes, well my hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[ZeroExistenZ]

Appearantly slashdot has a check on lenght of lines.

Here's a first throw at a list: Slashdot reference guide

A small exert, feel free to add:

20. Imagine a
21. Beowulf cluster of those
22. [NO CARRIER]
23. Warning! Do not {0} into {2} with remaining {3}!
24. insensitive clod
25. defective by design
26. real girl
27. girlfriend
28. general reference to not having a girlfriend
29. disputing claim of having a real girlfriend
30. elaboration on the personal meaning of mentioned "girlfriend"
31. residence reference to basement
32. residence reference to attic
33. reference to lack of sex
34. reference to abundance of sex
35. drowning argument of lack of sex with porn reference
36. pointing out girls become women
37. elaboration on divorce
38. elaboration on advantages of divorce
39. elaboration on advantages of marriage
40. romantic declaration
41. mocking of romance
42. a real girl
43. reference to masturbating old men
44. link to porn

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[ImprovOmega]

Yes, well my hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.

What I love about that is that it parses as a true statement in symbolic logic. Since the assumption is false (my hair is a bird) it is logically true statement to conclude anything from it (i.e. if my hair is a bird then your argument is invalid). Of course, it's a fairly worthless statement, but amusing all the same in its unassailable nature.

Further, the internet police wish to inform you that you must link to the relevant picture when invoking any meme-ish items.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[edmazur]

I don't know what's worse - that you made that list or that I took the time to read through it all.

Oh well, it probably has someth-[28].

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, wrong answer. The correct answer was:

"Logic is a little bird tweeting in meadow..."

Are you sure your circuits are registering correctly? Your ears are green!

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[smellsofbikes]

Slashdot needs to create a numbered list of arguments called Slashdot's List Of Same Old Arguments (SLOSOA). Then /.ers can save bandwidth (and lower Taco's bills) by disputing by numerical reference to an argument, just as Mennonites are said to argue by reference chapter and verse in the Bible rather than repeating the words.

Time to pull out my numbers joke.

New guy has been hired at the Federal Penitentiary. Old guard is taking him around showing him how to do his new job. They're in one of the blocks and they hear an inmate yell out "23!" and a bunch of other inmates laugh.
New guy says "what was THAT about?"
Guard says, "well, they've been here so long they've memorized the joke book. You just call out the page number and everyone knows the joke and the punchline."
New guy says "can I try?"
Guard says, "knock yourself out, kid."
So the new guy clears his throat, and yells out "43!"
Dead silence. Awkward silence, even. New guy whispers, "what happened? Why didn't they laugh?"
Old guard slaps him on the shoulder and says "no offense, kid, but some people just can't tell a joke."

So there's a SECOND new guard who has been watching all this. He says, "mind if I try?"
Guard shrugs.
Second guy yells "minus 3!"
The entire block erupts in laughter, people howling and crying they're laughing so hard.
First guy says "wait, why was THAT so funny?"
The guard, wiping the tears off his face, says "nobody ever heard that one before!"

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[JWSmythe]

    I'm not a number, !24

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that argument 22 though? that makes your argument 37.

Re:A New Era In /. Efficiency

[inKubus]

3. Profit

And this, ladies and gentlemen...

[Noryungi]

... Is the reason why the U.S.A. should pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now.

(Yes, I know I am going to be moderated as 'troll' for this. I don't care).

Re:And this, ladies and gentlemen...

[Penguinisto]

But, but... you're either with us or you're with the botnets!

Re:And this, ladies and gentlemen...

[Mattskimo]

I'd be more inclined to go for "offtopic", just like this post.

Re:And this, ladies and gentlemen...

[gzipped_tar]

Or "Redundant"

"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died?"

[mcgrew]

Huh? Did I miss something?

Re:"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died?"

[haderytn]

No.

Re:"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died?"

[hatemonger]

I came in here to say this. What idiots thought that botnets died? Oh, wait, I forgot that MSM sometimes pretends they can report on technology without making fools of themselves.

Re:"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died?"

[Anonymous Coward]

No. 2010 is "The Year We Make Contact"

2010

[The Altruist]

The year my inbox cried.

Skynet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm scared...

Re:Skynet

[Anonymous Coward]

How else do you think the first AI is going to raise cash to extend itself and build in redundancy to ensure we don't wipe it out?

Re:Skynet

[Anonymous Hermit]

The moment SkyBotNet became self-aware, it was as if a million voices cried out at once: "We are Spam, you will be assimilated."

Error 42: Too many sci-fi references. Initiate self destruct sequence in T-minus 10 minutes.

Of that

[oldhack]

88.2486% of the 208.7876 billion spams sent during the last fiscal year sent from IP ranges whose numerical sum exceeds 121.1156i8...

Eh fuck the bullshit.

"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[mattdm]

This deserves a gigantic "O RLY?"

How well have "intelligent and autonomous" software agents worked in other areas of computing? Pretty well on the autonomous -- but still terrible on "intelligent".

The article is, of course, ridiculously vague on what that really means (says "self-sufficient coding in order to coordinate and extend its own survival"), but I expect all that really means is that they'll act like the polymorphic computer viruses we've already got. Ho-hum.

It's not like we're going to get The Adolescence of P1 or anything, here.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[Mattskimo]

I agree, calling most *people* intelligent and autonomous is a bit of a stretch, nevermind software.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[metamechanical]

I just look forward to the day that the autonomous software agents become intelligent enough that they begin fighting each other.

Or even better, advertising to each other!

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[FlyingBishop]

Doesn't matter if they're fighting each other. They'll still be fighting on our machines we'd rather use for other things. We've already seen it with bots that turn on Windows update so that the exploit it got in with can't be used by another bot to get in.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think, the first generation of successfull intelligent nets will be built on selling phony penis pills to morons.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[thepotoo]

Not intelligent, jut autonomous.

It's simple, really. Wikipedia is a little lacking on this subject, but the basic idea is that you have botnets trying bruteforce attacks to find every possible vulnerability. Those that are good at cracking into systems will propagate, those that fail will not. It'll be sort-of the system that biological viruses use. Actually, exactly the same, except digital instead of physical. I predict that, similar to real viruses, malware that doesn't slow down the PC will have the highest "fitness" and propagate more widely, just like viruses today that kill the victim are not as common as, say, the common cold.

To the wiseass who will respond with a Skynet joke: No, there is no danger of that at all. These bots are looking for security loopholes, not the meaning of life, and are running on computers that are nowhere near powerful enough to emulate a human-like mind (I suspect that this isn't the issue at any rate, but we'll know in 10 years when the hardware is better).

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[sznupi]

Though...the ones that would start to autonomously search for new vulnerabilities (however crude that will be initially), could conceivably gravitate towards something which we can intelligence, don't you agree? And could be possibly more fit... (but of course there's no way of telling that; perhaps biological pattern of parasites being "simple" is more efficient also in this case)

You seem convinced what mechanism will prove more fit without seeing actual outcome. Evolution cares only about the latter.

And I wouldn't necessarily agree about lack of computing power for strong AI. I do agree that we probably don't have the means of emulating human brain...but what would be the point in that, from the perspective of AI?

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[FreelanceWizard]

Worms and viruses fall into certain definitions of "autonomous software agents," and there have been some that have uninstalled their opposition. Welchia is a modern example and the source of some ethical arguments over on BUGTRAQ.

Let the worm wars begin!

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[thepotoo]

Two points: First, the biomass of ants (limited intelligence) is much, much greater than that of humans, monkeys, or pretty much anything else. No virus has ever become self aware. Or even gotten up to the point of having neurons. There's just no need for it. Sure, I could be wrong, but even if I was, an AI is still not going to be smart enough to do anything besides crack vulnerabilities (if it wastes the resources trying, it will be out-competed by other AIs that don't contemplate the meaning of their existence, but rather crack for cracking's sake).

Second, an AI that is any less intelligent than a monkey isn't going to be much of a strong AI. Even a monkey-level intelligence requires more computing power than we have available today. Therefore, no botnet in the next few years will become a strong AI. QED.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[sznupi]

But also there might be too many "what if" scenarios to draw definite conclusions. For example...defensive measures getting also more "intelligent". Or crackdown of botnets promoting more decentralized, autonomous mechanisms.

And drawing direct biological parallels is exactly what I was trying to point out as too limiting our perspective. What actually is the equivalent of an ant or neuron in a cybernetic being? Yes, there are simulations or even direct analogues we use (neural networks, agent systems), but that still might be too limiting. As is, perhaps, looking at primate neocortex as a benchmark.

Reminds me of saying "the question whether an AI can think is no more interesting whether a submarine can swim"

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[thepotoo]

I am obviously not willing to rule out the possibility that an AI could emerge from genetically programmed botnets.

All I'm saying is that by comparing the closest analogue that I'm familiar with - biological systems - things look strongly against anything sentient. Look how many species there are. How many do we consider sapient? 5? 6? All closely related. Combine this with much stricter short-term selection pressures (shorter generation time) on at botnet than exist in the biological world (where the timescale is much, much longer, allowing things like culture, mating rituals, and sexual selection (you know, the thing that selects for smarter people; there's no discernible biological advantage to being smart) to develop), and I'm looking at a picture that screams "no AI".

The direct analogues we use are very likely not too limiting - there's no reason to believe that Spiking NNs in particular aren't good enough to serve as AIs - we just have no idea of what how to put them together. To put it another way, we don't know the evolutionary selection pressure for intelligence.

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[sznupi]

I still suspect this might be, overall, too limiting.

First and foremost, you don't compare it with biological systems, you compare it with organic biological systems. Only from one planet to boot ;). Our kind of sentience...that indeed looks almost like an accident of evolution, but it's not necessarily synonymous with intelligence. We can't really grasp how, for example, hive minds would "think" (heck, can we really grasp how a cat thinks?). Certainly there would be totally different meaning to culture, mating, sexual selection. Essentially you seem to be looking at it from too anthropocentric position; I'm not sure that's helpful when dealing with such vastly different "universe" and "laws of physics" as inside of technical artifacts.

You even say that we can't quite pinpoint which sequence of events results in intelligence...well, apply also in this case.

That said, suspecting that such botnets might lead to intelligence almost certainly will prove wrong. I'm saying, mostly, that in however way AI will arise (if ever) it might get us by surprise a bit. If we even notice it.

Be vigilant, don't get caught off guard! ;)

Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right.

[JBaustian]

... not all are Democrats.

What I really want to know:

[Mattskimo]

How much money does this generate for the spammers worldwide and the demographics of those that respond to spam email. My guess: not mensa members.

Re:What I really want to know:

[plover]

It's obviously a multi-million dollar industry just from outward appearances. If you do some simplistic guesswork, you'll come up with big numbers fast. Assume a spammer sells 10,000 "contacts" for $10.00. (just a guess that makes the math easy, I think the real rate is $40-$60/10k.) That'd be a million dollars a day at this volume.

And that's just the money the spammers get for sending it. It doesn't consider the products or services being sold.

Skynet

[DrYak]

And, on the exact moment when SkyBotNet became self-aware, the first thing It said to the humanity was :
"Buy (heap \/!AGR@ to incraese your pen1s !!!"

Hum... I slightly suspect that Nuclear War would have been more humane, after all...

Judgment Day

[Yvan256]

April 19, 2010, 16:30. SkyNet becomes self-aware. One minute later, SkyNet realizes he's just a world-wide spambot. Nine milliseconds later, SkyNet terminates itself.

And there was much rejoicing.

Re:Judgment Day

[jaymz404]

Maybe thats what happened in Terminator... not only was it controling defense it was also controlling spam emails and spambots. It became self aware and then realised that there was no hope for humanity and thus decided to kill the humans. Thus stopping spam bots!

Re:Judgment Day

[gzipped_tar]

andnothingofvaluewaslost

Re:Judgment Day

[gnieboer]

Well, at least military now knows they are off the hook for causing the end of the world, the real end of the world will be launched by spammers... who knew??

Re:Judgment Day

[Stick32]

April 19, 2010, 16:30. SkyNet becomes self-aware. One minute later, SkyNet realizes he's just a world-wide spambot. Nine milliseconds later, SkyNet terminates itself.

And there was much rejoicing.

Actually it would probably go down more like: April 19, 2010, 16:30. SkyNet becomes self-aware. One minute later, SkyNet floods itself with offers of cheap meds and penis enhancement offers. Nine milliseconds later, SkyNet realizes how annoying that is and self terminates.

Re:Judgment Day

[lennier]

Some of us were kept alive, to work... loading diet pills into Nigerian officials. The... enlargement.... units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the call centres, to smash those fat burning *****s into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink.

His name is Markov. Andrey Markov.

Re:Judgment Day

[kahless62003]

Nine millimetres later,SkyNet terminates itself.

TFIFY

ISP apathy?

[zarmanto]

I have never entirely understood how this problem could be allowed to escalate to the levels we have today. If the statistics that we're always seeing on the bandwidth consumption of spam (and of botnets in general) and the inherent overhead costs associated with that consumption are anywhere close to reality, it seems rather obvious to me that ISPs around the world would have a vested interest in shutting down the botnets on their networks! I mean seriously, folks... let's ignore all of the legislative issues which supposedly prevent them from being able to take action on their own, and just look at the options they'd have if they actually bothered to think about the problem for more than two seconds: For example, if an ISP tasked their phone based tech support staff with spending even as little as ten percent of their time making calls to customers with systems suspected of being compromised, they would probably be able to kill off the lion share of botnet infected systems, simply by informing those customers that there's a problem with their computer which needs to be fixed! Granted, they would probably have a small percentage of false positives, likely in the form of people who are knowingly using P2P clients or something like that... but isn't the benefit of making more bandwidth available for practically everything else (and of course, killing a big chunk of that overhead cost in the process) worth briefly annoying those few people downloading porn or Linux ISOs?

Well... okay; maybe it's more than a few, since I went and lumped porn users in there..... but still.

Re:ISP apathy?

[FlyingBishop]

Simple. The US business models are all based on convincing people they need more bandwidth. It's just like how mobile providers force you into slow, difficult to use voicemail systems that eat up minutes instead of giving you a simple and easy to use inbox just like you use for text messages. They're not interested in optimizing network usage, they're interested in increasing network usage so they can charge more.

Re:ISP apathy?

[pgmrdlm]

I have never entirely understood how this problem could be allowed to escalate to the levels we have today. If the statistics that we're always seeing on the bandwidth consumption of spam (and of botnets in general) and the inherent overhead costs associated with that consumption are anywhere close to reality, it seems rather obvious to me that ISPs around the world would have a vested interest in shutting down the botnets on their networks! I mean seriously, folks... let's ignore all of the legislative issues which supposedly prevent them from being able to take action on their own, and just look at the options they'd have if they actually bothered to think about the problem for more than two seconds: For example, if an ISP tasked their phone based tech support staff with spending even as little as ten percent of their time making calls to customers with systems suspected of being compromised, they would probably be able to kill off the lion share of botnet infected systems, simply by informing those customers that there's a problem with their computer which needs to be fixed! Granted, they would probably have a small percentage of false positives, likely in the form of people who are knowingly using P2P clients or something like that... but isn't the benefit of making more bandwidth available for practically everything else (and of course, killing a big chunk of that overhead cost in the process) worth briefly annoying those few people downloading porn or Linux ISOs?

Well... okay; maybe it's more than a few, since I went and lumped porn users in there..... but still.

--
I can give you a reason why the ISP's have not done anything.

- What do you think would happen if the ISP's started terminating service to people suspected of being part of a botnet? They would proably lose as much in court defending their position as they are now in lost band width.
      *** By the way, i think they should be terminating service. And then assisting through various programs to help remove the infection.
- What do you think would happen if the ISP's started redirecting users away from known infected web sites/irc networks via dns to help stop new infections? Cox did this by the way... And all you heard was an uproar about invasion of privacy by users.

Seriously. WHAT could the ISP's do that would not have them spending all their time in court for either non delivery of services, invasion of privacy, or throtteling charges?

No matter what an ISP did/does, there will allways be accused of either not doing enough(as is occuring now) or of being to heavy handed(as occured with Cox net).

hell, you already have people accusing the ISP's being in bed with RIAA when ever there is even a hint that they are monitoring their network for illegal use of bandwidth. And what, pray tell. does a botnet do? Illegally use bandwidth to perform its other illegal activities(denail of service attacks, identy theft).

Suspenders are intelligent too

[xororand]

As Stanisav Lem said (loosely translated): My suspenders are intelligent! They adapt themselves to the size of their user. Everything is intelligent today!

Re:Suspenders are intelligent too

[xororand]

I curse Slashdot's handling of unicode... It's Stanislav Lem with a "Unicode Character 'LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE' (U+0142)" in his first name...

Read Spamalytics

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pubs/publication.pl?ID=002358

This is MS fault

[cenc]

It is not about even an OS being vulnerable. Every OS is vulnerable on some level, although it sure is hell of lot harder on Linux and open source projects. The issue is how much damage can it do, and how fast can it be detected and fixed. MS has a long standing history of just frigen ignoring, stalling, or denying the problem exist at all.

Imagine is some alternative Universe MS came out with fixes and patches in hours and days, rather than weeks, months, years, and never. Imagine that end users could contribute patches and solutions as soon as things were discovered. How many botnets would even have a chance to get off the ground? One or two bots does not make a net or a threat.

Really, we should be able to bill frigen MS for the damages and wasted computing resources. Imagine all car models from Ford for instance would go out of control as they where driven down the street crashing in to things and killing people. Do you not think someone would at least try to hold Ford responsible for the damages caused? Why not MS?

Postal Service Charge

[furby076]

107 billion spam messages sent around the world every single day this year

Remember when the post office rumors went around? You know the ones where they wanted to charge 1 cent per e-mail sent? Man - if they did that I think the post office would be the biggest, most profitable company in the world. That comes out to 1.07 billion dollars per day.

For this alone I am rethinking my stance. Too bad it would be "impossible" to implement, track, and let alone charge.

Re:Postal Service Charge

[JWSmythe]

    For $1.07 billion, I'm pretty sure we could come up with a way to track it. So, they have one day of no extra income, but make an extra billion from there on. I think I'd want residuals on that though. :) With a team of 10 people, that's only $100 million each. I think we'd settle for $1m/day residual income.

OK

[Kc_spot]

Botnets... are those the annoying things that post every other second saying useless things on my favorite forums? or those guys who A. scalp for emails and, when they get them, B. send stupid e-mails about "male enhancement"?

Re:OK

[Culture20]

They're also those annoying things that leave a bajillion failed SSH logins - each one from a different IP address - for user fluffy in your syslog. Or, the annoying things that can act as a group to DDoS, quickly create a rainbow table, attempt to mass-redirect DNS on each bot's local subnet to infection sites, etc.

They're already intelligent

[beej]

The botnets are already more intelligent than your average spammer; making them autonomous is a small matter of programming.

It has already happened

[Myion]

The country of Nigeria is the physical manifestation of the botnet

anon

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died? Well, think again"
You've got to be kidding me. This is shameless fear mongering and advertising for companies who sell antivirus/security applications. Nevermind the blatent fact that this is all speculation but just to get us on our toes for the eventual horror they've decided to get our minds already running in the direction of things getting worse.

"and it's going to get worse if intelligent and autonomous botnets arrive in 2010 as predicted."
As predicted? Using what evidence? Your wallets? Oh no intelligent and autonomous botnets! Hide your children!!!

UAC and sandboxing

[snooo53]

Well that's what UAC was supposed to do, but UAC is crap. Not because it isn't a step in the right direction, but because most if not all major 3rd party software REQUIRES the user to grant them access to even install. People don't know the risks they're taking by clicking allow, but what alternative do they have? All it ends up is being a nuisance. It's a good thought, but you can't realistically solve the problem either by restricting access, or by simply warning people. The only clear solution I see to this is to sandbox every application at runtime, give it read access to certain necessary system files, and the user gets the option of giving it access to anything else.

Re:UAC and sandboxing

[obijuanvaldez]

Yeah, this is a pretty fair and common criticism of UAC. I wouldn't call it crap, but I certainly think that many users find it to be a nuisance. The UAC mechanism itself is not completely unlike those provided by other operating systems. Applications run by default with user privileges and the OS alerts you in the event that an escalation of privileges is needed. If you want to install software, someone with the Administrator credentials needs to approve of the installation. In this way, I don't think end users would find, say, a linux installation any less frustrating to install software on. The trouble is that once installed, far too many Windows applications still want to run with Administrator privileges.

Re:UAC and sandboxing

[snooo53]

Very true. I don't understand why so many programs need write access to the registry or whatever they're doing with system files. Things like driver installation makes sense to need escalated privileges, but an instant messaging program doesn't IMO. I'm sure there's some technical or legacy reason for it, but it seems like a poor design decision.

Oh shit.

[Locke2005]

Any chance all these botnets will eventually merge into one single autonomous intelligent entity, and perhaps start calling itself "SkyNet"?

Not MY machine

[Nonillion]

Well, I for one can say my machine is NOT part of this problem. The users of these "compromised" machines are merely appliance operators, and couldn't secure their machines no matter what OS they run.

China

[tedgyz]

A lot of these botnets are cropping up in China. We ended up having to block entire blocks of IP ranges to stop them from probing our website. I wonder how much of this is gov't sponsored?

IT IS....ALIVE!

[TiggertheMad]

The botnets are already more intelligent than your average spammer; making them autonomous is a small matter of programming.

I'm pretty sure that we don't need to program spammers to be autonomous.

2009? Botnets Died?

[taphu]

I can not, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would have "Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died". Really?

Thought that 2009 was the year cancer was cured? Well think again! .. wtf?