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Mariposa Botnet Beheaded
northernboy and many other readers sent news of the beheading of the Mariposa botnet with three arrests in Spain. "Defense Intelligence of Ottawa working with ISPs and Spanish authorities have taken down yet another > 12M PC botnet, called Mariposa. The three top-level operators are in custody, but remain anonymous under Spanish law (how quaint: apparently in Spain, the accused have some right to privacy). AP is claiming that the botnet included systems in roughly half of the Fortune 1000 companies, scattered over 190 countries. Interesting details: none of the three principals has a prior criminal record. Although apparently hardworking, they are not uber-hackers, but rather had connections to the Spanish mafia, which apparently helped to equip them. At the time of arrest, they were not showing signs of their significant new income level. From the article: 'Chris Davis, CEO of Ottawa-based Defence Intelligence, said he noticed the infections when they appeared on networks of some of his firm's clients, including pharmaceutical companies and banks. It wasn't until several months later that he realized the infections were part of something much bigger. After seeing that some of the servers used to control computers in the botnet were located in Spain, Davis and researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center joined with software firm Panda Security, which is headquartered in Bilbao, Spain. The investigators caught a few lucky breaks. For one, the suspects used Internet services that wound up cooperating with investigators. That isn't always the case.'"
"The Mariposa botnet, which has been dismantled, was easily one of the world's biggest. It spread to more than 190 countries, according to researchers. It also appears to be far more sophisticated than the botnet that was used to hack into Google Inc. and other companies in the attack that led Google to threaten to pull out of China." ----- Wait, what? This was written by the AP's "technology writer". I guess he doesn't read /.? The Google attack was not a botnet.
"What gives these bloody do-gooders the authority to "take over" other people's servers?"
The same authority I have to "take over" someones car keys if I see them staggering out of a bar, and fumbling around to find the lock on their door while throwing up all over the hood. If you're acutely aware, and certain, that your non-action is allowing an illegal activity to take place then why not intervene? The problem today is that too many people just stand there like idiots doing nothing in the face of evil or criminal activity. The fact the servers these shitbags were using were probably compromised, or funded by illegal activities is neither here nor there.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Of course, we are talking about botnet script-kiddies after all, so whose to say these upstanding individuals aren't actually minors as well?
Do you seriously believe that today's bot nets have any resemblance with the irc-botnets of yesteryear? Bot nets are used primarily by organized criminals these days, trading in identities and performing phishing and scamming operations. The script kiddies were replaced by real crooks with guns a long time ago.
.: Max Romantschuk
If ISP helped authorities on these things, there wouldn't be botnets, nor spam. Many attempts at preventing spam stop at their refusal to help. It would be nice to force them by lay to cooperate with spam fighting efforts. Sadly laws to force them to cooperate fighting "piracy" seem to pass easier..... =/
In both the USA and Canada, you're allowed to publish the names of the accused as long as they're adults.
Which is done, of course, with the understanding that these people are again innocent as they have not been proven otherwise. Since they are innocent, there is nothing for them to be embarrassed about, and no reason not to publish their names.
Also, the publication of names can have the effect of bringing forth witnesses.
Unfortunately, the court of public opinion has no presumption of innocence.
Here's one reason botnets thrive: In addition to the fact that the perpetrators are likely to get away with it, per one article, They face up to six years in prison if convicted of hacking charges..
6 years max? For hacking 12 million computers? Ignoring the intrusions, how much did it cost the victims in labor and downtime to fix it? Hundreds of millions? And add to that the damage they did with the botnet; I don't know what this one did, but it could be spam, DDoS attacks, stolen personal info, extortion, etc.
Also, I still don't understand why the U.S. government doesn't treat these wide-spread, expensive crimes as a priority. Given the scale of these crimes, there should be a large task force pursuing them. I get the sense they are looked on as computer problems, not crimes.
I always loved the US idea of declaring someone to be a juvenile, yet trying them as an adult in order to get a harsher punishment.
Either someone is a juvenile or they aren't...and if you try a 16 year-old as an adult and they are acquitted, does that mean they can now drink and drive like an adult as well?
This was-in a way-Blue Security's model, and it worked exceptionally well. So well that one spammer fought back on a very large scale, causing much hate and discontent towards Blue Security.
The problem now is that businesses have learned their lessons and obfuscate their websites better, as well as adding CAPTCHAs to prevent automated scripts like Blue Frog from attacking them.
And I've encountered a few spams from legitimate businesses who had no clue that they'd hired a spammer to do their email advertising. The poor guy was scared to death when my brother-in-law told them what was happening, as they were a multi-million dollar New York real estate business dealing in properties in Montauk.
You don't ask prices for anything in Montauk, so this guy definitely did NOT need a spammer.
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