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Comcast Warns Customers Suspected of Bot Infection

Posted by Soulskill on from the wonder-what-this-does-when-it-detects-torrents dept.

eldavojohn writes "Comcast is pushing a new program nationwide that warns customers if they might have a bot infection. It puts a semitransparent overlay on the top of the website you're viewing, warning you that you may have a bot installed if the provider detects botnet traffic from your residence. Of course, if you have multiple machines running behind a router or modem then you're going to have a difficult time pinning down which machine might have the infection."

6 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, what? by XanC · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The method they chose for notification is to man-in-the-middle my connections? Are they injecting Javascript into sites I visit? Does this mess with protocols other than HTTP? Why can't they just send an email to the account holder, or call them with a recorded message? Why break your service in order to fix it?

  2. Well it's about friggin' time! by ThreeGigs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now if every other ISP would do something similar. Maybe block access until a user reads a notice or something.

    That said, Comcast's way of doing this might look to me like the website I was looking at was trying to sell me malware... like one of those "YOU'RE INFECTED! SCAN NOW?" popups.

  3. Re:Excellent idea by green1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What happened to the good old days of ISPs where if your computer was being a menace the ISP phoned you, and if you still didn't fix it they cut off your internet access until you did?

    It worked. and it worked well.

  4. Re:Mixed feelings by Hamsterdan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What about a phone call? My ISP does this. Granted, it only has about 1.5 million customers. The way it goes is first, a phone call, if they are unable to talk to the person, they disable the modem until they call back. They only do this for large botnets, unless they receive a complaint about an IP.

    But it *IS* effective.

    Overlays and emails will only teach people to click on fake antivirus warnings, like you said...

    --
    I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  5. Re:Mixed feelings by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's good that Comcast is actually doing something, but I'm not really sure how effective it will be, and the precedent it sets makes me a little leery.

    Who wants to bet that torrent trackers and users of uTorrent will end up with these "overlays"?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. Do we really want botnets to go away? by mykos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm kind of torn on botnets. The only sites that get taken down by botnets that I have read about lately are sites of organizations I wish didn't exist anyway.

    When ACTA inevitably becomes the law of the land, DDoS will be one of the few weapons we plebes will have left against corporatism.