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Iranian Cyber Army Moves Into Botnet Renting

Posted by Soulskill on from the god-help-you-if-you-dent-the-drywall dept.

angry tapir writes "A group of malicious hackers who attacked Twitter and the Chinese search engine Baidu are also apparently running a for-rent botnet, according to new research from Seculert. The so-called Iranian Cyber Army also took credit last month for an attack on TechCrunch's European website. In that incident, the group installed a page on TechCrunch's site that redirected visitors to a server that bombarded their PCs with exploits in an attempt to install malicious software."

9 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. No Connection with Tehran by explosivejared · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems that there is no real connection between this group and Tehran. It's important to remember that when there is real discussion going on about conflict with Iran. That being said, this group does seem to be motivated by some sort of Iranian nationalism. It's just a further reminder of how small groups and individuals can inflame international imbroglios, leaving state actors in a bind. Think the Netanyahu and Obama administrations' paralysis over how to handle the settlers in the West Bank.

    --
    I got a catholic block.
    1. Re:No Connection with Tehran by zrbyte · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes. Welcome to the 21st century, where more and more power can be concentrated in the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people. For better and for worse.

    2. Re:No Connection with Tehran by sznupi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Still, "Iranian Cyber Army" is awfully convenient.

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      One that hath name thou can not otter
    3. Re:No Connection with Tehran by Xest · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "It's just a further reminder of how small groups and individuals can inflame international imbroglios, leaving state actors in a bind."

      No I'm pretty sure the whole nuclear issue is what's got the state actors in a bind in this case.

      Obama and Ahmadinejad could likely not give a flying fuck what a bunch of script kiddies are upto.

    4. Re:No Connection with Tehran by pyrosine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is actually a very smart move, by masking their actions behind political or even religious ideals (providing they dont actually support that cause), they will confuse people into looking into more details than need be. Could quite easily be a group in America with no affiliation to Iran, meaning they have achieved their goal of misdirection extremely well.

    5. Re:No Connection with Tehran by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can blame national media and the speed of light. For better and for worse.

      Thought experiment: You thought WWII would have been won with all that coverage in hi-def bloody detail for all the public to see? I would say not. I would also say that's why we lost in Vietnam. Being that war will and is always nasty. The only way to win one is to not provide media coverage to the public.

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      Life is not for the lazy.
    6. Re:No Connection with Tehran by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the ISPs are forced to lock down botnets and shut down suspected botnet traffic, they will also shut down anything they think are copyright or patent violations too. Friend point out a new song on YouTube and you go listen to it? Next thing you know the ISP has chopped your pipe and you are looking at sitting through 30 hours of mandatory "copyright compliance reeducation" classes which is a loop of the "don't copy that floppy" from the 80s.

      Don't forget patents. With the combination of app stores and activation infrastructures, there is going to come a time where piracy will be hard to do, so people will move to F/OSS apps for their work (GIMP from Photoshop, OOo from MS Office). What will be the next shoe that drops are dubious software patents that get enforced on the end user level by a RIAA-like authority.

      I'm sure eventually someone will find some obscure patent that they can use against vi or emacs, and demand that they pull all text editors from all OS distributions, and of course, their text editor will cost $100 per user per machine. Then some patent enforcement agency will start running nmap against machines and demanding anyone with a UNIX based box pay up or be sued for punitive damages (hundreds of millions). Sound far-fetched, but this is what is going to happen next once piracy isn't an issue.

  2. Irrelevant by Kupfernigk · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The example of WW2 is totally irrelevant. With current levels of surveillance and sigint, Germany would have been stopped long before they invaded Austria. The "hi-def coverage" of Kristallnacht and other Nazi atrocities would have let everybody know what was going on, before Hitler could re-arm Germany. Hitler was reassured by his American contacts that the US was at least neutral and possibly pro-German up until well into 1940. A German Wikileaks would have ensured that did not happen.

    I expect to get moderated flamebait, but the reason the US lost the Vietnam war was quite simple, exactly the same as why Hitler lost against the Soviet Union: despite their awful Governments, both the Russians and the Vietnamese preferred their awful Governments to the alternative. The American inability to understand that not everybody wants to be American is itself a cause of war.

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    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
    1. Re:Irrelevant by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Informative

      The example of WW2 is totally irrelevant. With current levels of surveillance and sigint, Germany would have been stopped long before they invaded Austria. The "hi-def coverage" of Kristallnacht and other Nazi atrocities would have let everybody know what was going on, before Hitler could re-arm Germany.

      Um. Kristallnacht happened months AFTER Austria was under the rule of Germany, so I'm not sure how coverage of it would have stopped the invasion of Austria.

      A German Wikileaks would have ensured that did not happen.

      If a German Wikileaks were allowed to exist, Germany wouldn't have been a problem in the first place. The thing is, sites like wikileaks are GREAT at stopping liberal democracies, while they tend to be pretty powerless against oppressive dictatorships.

      despite their awful Governments, both the Russians and the Vietnamese preferred their awful Governments to the alternative. The American inability to understand that not everybody wants to be American is itself a cause of war.

      That is, of course, complete nonsense. In Russia you had a single faction fighting under one government with support from external forces against an invader. In Vietnam you had two opposing sides fighting each other, with one receiving support from the US and the other receiving support from Russia and other communist nations. You'd have to have absolutely no understanding of either conflict in order to claim that there's any significant similarity between them. And you’d have to be a complete moron to suggest that the US actually wanted to turn the Vietnamese into Americans.