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Rent Your Own Botnet
An anonymous reader writes "New research shows that the TDSS/TDL-4 botnet, widely considered one of the largest and most sophisticated, can be rented via a Web storefront available to all comers. Researchers from Kaspersky found that the latest version of TDSS installs a file that sets the machine up as a proxy for anonymous browsing, and then phones home to awmproxy.net, which rents the proxies for rates from $3 per day to $300 a week. The curators of this service even created a Firefox add-on to help customers. 'Interestingly, AWMproxy says it accepts payment via PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa.'"
The site is real, and amusing.
It's hosted by Leaseweb. It uses Google Analytics, with Google ID 'UA-3816538-24'.
I've always wanted to be a dark and mysterious marionette. And for 3 bucks a day? Gosh, Golly!
I wonder if you can specify the IP address range of the "proxies" you'd want.
First off, to see if any machines that you're responsible for have been cracked.
Secondly, penetration tests. Why bother with SQL injections and such if you can just rent half a dozen pre-cracked boxen there.
They say upfront that you can do illegal things with the proxy, thousands of proxies that only last a few hours, many availible during the day then at the early night hours. Yeah, this is a legit site. Makes me wonder how many people acually pay for the proxies. Especially given that the people who use the site will likely know where the proxies come from. But then again, they are "private with no logs." You can trust a company that uses proxies that phone in with know viruses on them.
Publish some leaked secrets and get your accounts repeatedly frozen. Blatantly engage in electronic fraud, computer intrusion and spamming, and bill for these services via credit card with impunity.
Interestingly, AWMproxy says it accepts payment via PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa.
Do they accept payment in bitcoin and is the botnet big enough to mine more BTC/hr than the rental cost in BTC/hr? Hmm.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Those bots aren't a threat to US-American hegemony. An when there's a buck to be made... "(Thug-)Life takes Visa."
Wow! Just, wow! I mean, I can rent a freaking botnet, and put it on my MasterCard!
One would think the authorities, or at least some soveriegn government entity, would go after this sort of project and kill it, and possibly those who were providing it, but lo and behold, here it is readily accessible to anyone with a vengeance or a mind for lulz.
The future is wide open, and I can't wait to see what's coming next!
So can you rent the botnet, and run a program that disinfects the botnet systems? Seems like that'd be a nice bit of white-hattery...
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Maybe Wikileaks should have been a botnet.
I8-D
Yeah you can buy whatever you want with MC/Visa: nazi/white supremacist paraphernalia, a donation to the KKK, some botnet time, whatever, just don't try to donate to Wikileaks or buy anything of questionable copyright status!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I earnestly hope this gets taken down ASAP or some innocent people might wind up in prison thanks to pedos renting the botnet to get kiddie porn. I'd think that if they're taking payment via credit card then they damned well should be traceable by some means.
So can you rent the botnet, and run a program that disinfects the botnet systems?
No, it'd probably just disinfect the inside of the virtual machine that the botnet has installed. Or at least that's how it'd be if the botnet is as professional as Amazon's EC2 botnet.
Source since you didn't provide one... Oh wait.. this contradicts your statement... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/04/worlds_first_mac_botnet_hardly.html
C'mon, enough with the slashvertisements already!
If the majority of people used a Mac, then there would be Mac rootkits all over the place, and a few people would be bragging about how secure Windows is.
Two so far. Let's see how well the troll worked.
Trojan on pirated software? I'd say that counts as _intentional_ participation in a botnet. Perhaps that's how quite a lot of Windows malware is spread as well. But that certainly didn't amount to anything like a rootkit infection through a privilege escalation vulnerability purely in software.
If the majority of people used a Mac, then there would be Mac rootkits all over the place, and a few people would be bragging about how secure Windows is.
That is utterly irrelevant if you want more security right now!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
International law enforcement needs to get to work flowing the money. Follow it through botnet rentals, affiliate marketing programs, etc. Cut off flow of money and botnet dies.
Rent Your Own Botnet
No, rent someone else's botnet. Why would you rent something that's already yours?
So in addition to an open wifi router, we now have another means by which an innocent user can unwittingly have copyrighted music and movie files downloaded via his/her IP address.
So I can use Visa or Master card to rent time on a botnet which goes to criminals but I cannot use then to donate to Wikileaks.....
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Can you distribute virtual machines across a bot network?
moox. for a new generation.
I'm going to install TDSS on a honeypot, load socks.dll on it, sniff some awmproxy.net customer's activities and post anything interesting I see them doing publically. Thanks for the lulz, awmproxy.net!
I wonder if you could rent a botnet to attack other botnets?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I can't believe /. missed the obvious headline: "Rent to Pwn"
Botnet rental: $3.
DDoS'ing your credit card company: Priceless.
There's some things money can't buy.
If you cut off the payments then the blackhats will have to find something else to make their evil millions.
Of course, the problem is that PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others like their revenue stream too much, they like their 1% cut of the spammer's ill gotten gains. They won't stop while any cash cow that can still be milked.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
If I was Bill Gates and serious about taking down this monster, I would use a lot of cash to keep it fully rented for a month, and within that month send out specially crafted ads, that can be traced back to its originating IP, this way we can find out exactly who is infected with this IP address. This IP address person can be contacted through their ISP and let it be known they are part of a botnet, and allow them to download a free tool from MS to clean up their machines, of course...there would be resistance to this, the ones resisting would have to be taken off their ISP traffic, until they actually fixed their machines.
This I believe would be a way to make a huge dent into this problem.
Its like the saying round the armed services
"Just to be Honest with you i hate you and everything you stand for but I WILL DEFEND WITH MY LAST BREATH AND ONCE OF WILL YOUR RIGHT TO EXIST (until i am ordered otherwise)."
now that does not say that if i know of the KKK planning to make trouble somewhere i would not arrange for say the Black Panthers (or some similar group) to also be present but they have a right to their opinion.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Can't buy from them anymore. From what I can tell awmproxy.net doesn't rent the botnet, they're just renting proxies.