Kelihos Botnet Comes Back To Life

angry tapir writes "A botnet that was crippled by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab last September is spamming once again and experts have no recourse to stop it. The Kelihos botnet only infected 45,000 or so computers but managed to send out nearly 4 billion spam messages a day, promoting, among other things, pornography, illegal pharmaceuticals and stock scams. But it was temporarily corralled last September after researchers used various technical means to get the 45,000 or so infected computers to communicate with a "sinkhole," or a computer they controlled."

Comments

Expected

[icebike]

Researchers knew that it would only be a matter of time before its controller used the botnet's complex infrastructure of proxy servers and communication nodes to regain control.

The linked story says they fully expected this, and that the method they used (sink-holing) was never expected to be a permanent solution. One has only to hope that stating they have no "recourse" is merely baffle-gab to embolden the controllers. It might also mean "lets make believe we haven't compromised some of the bots and planted a few or our own".

They also suggest that the suspected Russian controller couldn't be extradited, but conveniently neglect to mention that Kaspersky Lab is a Russian company that could influence internal Russian enforcement actions.

Kaspersky Lab Expert Maria Garnaeva Posts in her Blog some of the difference between the new and old control mechanisms: http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/655/Kelihos_Hlux_botnet_returns_with_new_techniques
She also mentions it is not as bleak as the original article, because:

It is still possible to neutralize the botnet with sinkholing but using slightly different techniques as was used before, and it is still possible to push an update tool on infected machines to neutralize the botnet. In this case the botmasters need to infect machines again to build another botnet.