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Suspected Mariposa Botnet Creator Arrested
mehemiah writes "The writer of the Mariposa Botnet has been arrested through international effort. The FBI said this arrest and the arrests of three alleged operators in February were the result of a two-year joint investigation into the Mariposa Botnet, which may have infected as many as eight million to 12 million computers around the world."
That's what I always tell people anyways...
/antivirus/* and install a a OSS/free AV of my liking
Take for example, that instead of growing a botnet for malicious reasons, I've told many that what someone should do is create virtuous botnet! Yes, virtuous!!
If I was to do this, I would make a botnet that deployed an antivirus. It could work like this:
n) Find its way to host
n) Check to see if it has an antivirus program installed. If so, check to see if it's any good. If not, rm -rf
n) Scan host for infections, notify them and quarantine everything by default (because most users have no clue anyway)
n) Phone home with info to create the worlds largest DB of infections and update all other machines to prevent same infection. n) Search for new hosts through contacts (twitter, myface, facebook etc)
n) ????????
n) Profit!
Now, if it was purely sinister, I would deploy a desktop wallpaper of a warewolf fighting a unicorn. And if ever caught, I would say "I only wanted to spread this great wallpaper! I didn't mean for it to also distribute malicious infections!"
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
...when you're a stranger...