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Are Computer Crooks Renting Out Your PC?

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-me-see-that-a-minute dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Brian Krebs recently posted an interesting piece looking at an invite-only service marketed on shadowy underground forums that lets crooks 'rent' or 'buy' access to individual botted PCs that can be used to tunnel traffic. The story looks at the mechanics of renting out bots, and the author traces some of the infected systems back to real businesses. From the post: 'The Limited; Santiam Memorial Hospital in Stayton, Ore.; Salem, Mass. based North Shore Medical Center; marketing communications firm McCann-Erickson Worldwide; and the Greater Reno-Tahoe Economic Development Authority.'"

4 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Are Computer Crooks Renting Out Your PC? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. I'm so busy surfing /. that I don't have any spare CPU cycles to rent out.

    1. Re:Are Computer Crooks Renting Out Your PC? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yo dog, I herd you like zero-days, so I put a zero day in your box so somebody else can compute while you compute...

    2. Re:Are Computer Crooks Renting Out Your PC? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually it is window's fault that it's insecure by design.

      It's not so much that Linux is necessarily more secure, just that the botnets can't get their software to run on it. Something about not having the right drivers, is what I heard.

      Yep, that's what I heard all right.

      Oh, take it easy...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. I knew it by fwarren · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows Vista was not that bloated. Microsoft was just monetizing spare CPU cycles on the Russian Black Market.

    --
    vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.