Bredolab Botnet Taken Down

Leon Buijs writes "Monday a 27-year-old Armenian was arrested at request of the Dutch authorities. The Dutch police think he is the brain behind the infamous, 30 million infected computers large Bredolab network, that was taken down by their Team (in Dutch) High Crime. Bredolab was used to spread virii and spam via the Netherlands. While taking the botnet down at a Dutch ISP, the suspect did several attempts to regain control. When this didn't work out, he did a DDoS attack on the ISP's servers using a 220,000 computers botnet. However, this was also broken off by taking 3 servers offline that the Armanian used for this, in Paris."

Comments

Well, I guess that leaves more hosts available

[h00manist]

to anyone else willing to take them.

Re:Well, I guess that leaves more hosts available

[camperslo]

Don't look now, but I think those hosts got infected with artificial intelligence bots that connect to tech news sites and bicker about word usage and validity.

Don't use made up words

[nyctopterus]

In before everyone else: there is no such word as 'virii'.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Spyware23]

This. For the love of tech news, spell-check your shit, slashdot.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Quietust]

For the benefit of people who mistakenly use it that way, the correct word is "viruses".

Re:Don't use made up words

[donnyspi]

aren't all words made up? :-D

Re:Don't use made up words

[Anonymous Coward]

...there is no such word as 'virii'.

We know... but we keep using it because we know it pisses you off.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Arancaytar]

Armania concurs. :P

Re:Don't use made up words

[blair1q]

I saw "Armanian" and all I could think of to post were jokes involving his lawyers filing expensive suits.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

If a word is in common usage, even if it's just within a particular subculture, who is to say that it isn't a "real" word? You?

Re:Don't use made up words

[zorg50]

On top of that, every sentence in the summary contains at least one grammatical error.

Re:Don't use made up words

[nopainogain]

as an Armenian, i say we coin the word ARMANIA, and define it as "aa condition of women who love those nurturing income-producing, middle-eastern christian guys". I need to meet some hot women who have "armania"

Re:Don't use made up words

[interkin3tic]

there is no such word as 'virii'.

Forsooth, dear sir! Thou hast yon goode pointe! Tounges be set upon stone, which hitherto is why Middle English is spake by e'ry gentleman today!

Which is to say, languages change. The summary used "virii,"we all knew what it meant, and it passes the "doesn't annoy me" test. So by my standards, it is a word despite what you and Webster's might say.

Re:Don't use made up words

[blair1q]

No, some are still mad at each other.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Captain Spam]

Using "virii" (or the equivalently stupid "boxen") in any context just makes you look like a pretentious dolt.

And complaining with the amount of vitroil you're dedicating to it about people using those words doesn't?

Re:Don't use made up words

[totallynotthesameguy]

More specifically: .COM infectors we super easy to write because they didn't have a huge header to deal with (like .exes did): code started at address 0x0100 and that's all. At least that's how I recall it.

So an infector just loaded up a .COM file, changed 0x0100 so it was a jump to the end of the .COM file, and then appended the entire infector's code to the end of the .COM file. Finally, you append the very first instruction you overwrote, and a jump back to the beginning. And that's it, now the .COM is itself an infector. To not be obvious your infector should only infect a few .COMs at a time, otherwise your 486 would slow to a crawl hunting up files to infect.

Of course, you could get more interesting (terminate and stay resident, more aggressively self-modifying code, etc), but that was the simplest virus I remember seeing.

Re:Don't use made up words

[John Hasler]

Why not? Doesn't everyone have equal say as to what constitutes common usage? If enough of us express our distaste for it then it may fall out of use and thus cease to be common usage. If not, then it may not. Everyone participates in forming the language. That includes dissing dorky neologisms.

Re:Don't use made up words

[John Hasler]

> ...it passes the "doesn't annoy me" test.

Speak for yourself.

Re:Don't use made up words

[blair1q]

Try here:

http://www.onelook.com/?w=virii

People keep using it and understanding it. In English. Which is made of words from several other languages, many misused to varying degrees relative to their foreign etymologies.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. They can tell you what a word you saw means, based on its previously observed contexts, but they can't tell you whether it's right or wrong. If they try, they are wrong.

The correct Latin plural would probably be virera. But we don't speak Latin any more. We only use it for religious sloganeering and high-falutin' biological codices.

That's if it's at all possible to pluralize it even in Latin. It's nearest synonym in English is "slime" or "pus", or the noun sense of "ooze", but we use it for "microphage", giving it countability. Like "water" or "blue" have no true plural in English, we nonetheless have invented "waters" and "blues" to describe situations where the singular form does not encompase the plurality of the context. Our choice of suffix in pluralization when inventing new words is entirely unbounded by any rules, as English has almost none given the many ancient systems it supports innately. So we resort to poetry, and choose one that sounds good.

I'll go with "virii" over "viruses" in almost every situation.

Oh, and I'm not a "pretentious dolt." I'm genuinely superior to you, intellectually.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Arthur Grumbine]

as an Armenian, i say we coin the word ARMANIA, and define it as...

Unfortunately, the word is already understood to mean, "the sweeping trend to compulsively talk like a pirate".

Re:Don't use made up words

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nearest synonym in English is "slime" or "pus", or the noun sense of "ooze", but we use it for "microphage", giving it countability. Like "water" or "blue" have no true plural in English

Nonsense!!

water => waterii
blue => blii
slime => slimii
puss =>pusii
ooze => oiiii!

Now, please add them to your dictionary.

Re:Don't use made up words

[Colonel Korn]

So we resort to poetry, and choose one that sounds good.

I'll go with "virii" over "viruses" in almost every situation.

Except in English we have no good way to pronounce "ii." Viruses sounds good because it never goes through an awkward double vowel phase. VIE-ree-IE is our best option for pronouncing virii, but it doesn't have great analogues in our language and involves a rare and limp lack of consonant sounds at the end.

Often, I hear people pronouncing virii VIE-REE, VIE-RIE, or VIE-REE-EE. It's simply unclear which is correct to the majority of people who have already settled on virii as their preferred spelling of the plural. Hence, I find that virii is an incredibly unsuccessful word with a clearly superior alternative.

If we wanted to go with a pseudo-Latin suffix, viri is clearly more familiar and more phonetically successful. The double i simply has no benefit.

Re:Don't use made up words

[BillX]

Well-actually... the latin word virus was non-count, the way we use "water" - they did not know at the time that a virus was a discrete object rather than a substance. So the plural of virus is... virus :-)

Dutch ahead of the game...

[digitaldc]

"Infected machines remain pox-ridden but the command system associated with the cybercrime network has been decapitated, following an operation led by hi-tech police in The Netherlands."

I would say the Dutch police are getting ahead of the cyber-criminals.
That guy should know that botnets are not the way to get ahead in life.
It's a shame he wasn't more headstrong, he'll never be the head of a major corporation.

Moral question

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

If I created a botnet, then used it to force all the computers to run Folding@Home. Would I still be evil?

Re:What Operating System on those 30million PCs?

[DigiShaman]

Don't forget, half the problem is between the keyboard and the chair. If you don't recognize an attachment from an untrusted e-mail source. Do NOT open it!

Capital Punishment!... Really!... Read On...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal. Back in the old west, horse staling was a capital crime. You didn't even need to be a real law enforcement officer to string someone up for stealing a horse!

Why was that? We don't knock off every car thief today, so why such harsh tratment for horse thieves? Two simple factors:

1. Horses were HUGELY important to the old west economy!

2. Stealing a horse is REALLY easy!

So... They made stealing a horse a capital crime as a strong deterrent to protect the business model from an otherwise trivial act.

See any Paralells???... The only way to deter hacking is to make the punishment much more severe than it is now. I'm not saying firing squad is the way to go for this guy, but something really bad.

Any Suggestions???

Re:Just once...

[FranckMartin]

..no they looked for ET!

Authorities inform involved computer users

[Jantastic]

What's new (for me at least), is that the authorities informed over 100,000 computer users of their infection/participation via an ISP by redirecting them to a warning published here by the dutch police. Not sure if that's common policy or something we'll see more often.

All words were made up!!!

[Medievalist]

In before everyone else: there is no such word as 'virii'.

Yes, because pedantry and slavish worship of Tom Christiansen is more important than providing a search-engine friendly way to distinguish between biological viruses and computer virii .

When did computer geeks become completely incapable of basic logic?

We spelled it byte and not bite for goddamned reason, you know.

I'll get modded flamebait, I suppose. Here's a translation for people who can't understand that a separate concept is best delineated by a separate word.

Marklar, because marklar and marklar marklar of Marklar is more marklar than providing a marklar marklar marklar to distinguish between marklar and marklar .

Re:Capital Punishment!... Really!... Read On...

[germansausage]

Hamstring him, dip him in gravy and drop him in a pit filled with starving chihuahuas. Of course if he were a SPAMMER we would need to consider something harsh.

Re:Treating of symptoms

[amicusNYCL]

I'm not surprised if the botnet is already up and running again, controlled from a new location.

I would be pretty surprised, seeing as how the controller is in custody.

Put This Guy Away So Long...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Bot-herders are a sub-species of lowlife scum humanity that could all disappear overnight and not be missed at all tomorrow.

This guy should be locked away until the day computers become so smart that none of them will cooperate with him anymore.