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Autonomous Intelligent Botnets Bouncing Back

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the duck-and-cover dept.

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."

9 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. "intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right. by mattdm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right. by Mattskimo · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

    2. Re:"intelligent and autonomous": yeah, right. by thepotoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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).

      --
      Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
  2. Re:What OS? by NoYob · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
  3. Re:What OS? by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. What I really want to know: by Mattskimo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:What OS? by Mattskimo · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

  6. Re:What OS? by Rennt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  7. Re:ISP apathy? by FlyingBishop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.