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Microsoft Disrupts Nitol Botnet
hypnosec writes "Having procured permission from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit managed to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware in a bid to slow down the threats posed by the Nitol botnet. Microsoft, through an operation codenamed b70 (PDF), discovered Chinese retailers were involved in selling computers with a pirated version of Windows loaded with malware. Microsoft believes the malware could have entered the supply chain at any point, for the simple reason that a computer travels among companies that transport and resell the computer. The Windows 8 maker carried out a study focused on the Nitol botnet, through which it found nearly 20 percent of all the PCs that were purchased through insecure Chinese supply chains were infected with malware."
I couldn't find in the article who was importing, selling or reselling the affected machines. They mention one individual but not his company.
If only back in 1998 when Microsoft knew that Windows 95 was open to all malware,
if they'd modified their thinking.
Instead of "let's make it so Win3.1 software can run on all our machines" and "Let's ...they could have used a real security model, locked down the system, and there
make it so Win95 can run on all our machines" and propagating that so EVEN THE
Win2K (NT) kernel was vulnerable...
would be no malware, no virus, no antivirus, no UEFI, no nothing today.
If there is one company that MADE A CONSCIOUS DECISION to let malware live
so that old software [you know, like your restaurant's point-of-sale system] run on
W95,W98, WME, W2K, Vista, 8, etc., and because of that decision the world is
overrun with malware, malware writers, mafias of malware writers, bitcoin thieves,
credit card thieves, wire-transfer thieves... that one company COULD HAVE made
a difference.
But they chose not to.
So today they "disrupted" (nonsense word) a botnet? That's good. Even if they
ELIMINATED the ENTIRE botnet, it's just one of many.
Useless. Microsoft.
E
Mister, you are walking the fine line between flame bait and accurate and informative information. I am so conflicted.
Just use a server MS doesn't control, and isn't in the US.
I would have to disagree. It sounds like you have a perfectly fine OS but you happened to install some Adobe products.
The Windows 8 maker
...did they really need to point that out? It has no bearing on the story whatsoever.
If I'm reading it right, they took down the botnet by having a US court take it's domain, was that a Chinese owned (.org) domain? I'm all for shutting down botnets, but to me it looks like they said to a US court that XYZ in that other country did something I didn't like, can I take control of their foreign website? I'd hate to see this be used against legitimate foriegn sites.
apk, I have the "utmost respect" for people regardless of their "background", as such...
but I have a question => as follows:
Could you please tell me why your posts: * are written like this *
HB
With lots of paragraphs comprising long sentences & punctuation! and the occasional bit of emphasis? ... it reminds me of a friend I had who was "recovering" from a drug addiction and he would go off on these long and somewhat incoherent rambles ...
He wasn't "stupid" <= by any stretch of the imagination but you could tell that he was having trouble sorting out thoughts (or at least expressing them (etc.))!
Anyway, it is a simple question: why do you write with this style?
It gives me this feeling like when I sit next to the guy on the bus who clearly can't cope very well and you know he's harmless but you wonder exactly what made him like this and you want to ask him but you are worried he might get attached and * well you know * next thing you'll be inviting him to your house and it's hard to be a good HOST (if you know what I mean)..
Hate to feed a troll but if ever there was a case where you can't blame MS, it's this. The malware was PREINSTALLED. You could do this with any operating system. Any system could be hacked so the process won't be displayed. You'd have to keep an eye out for suspicious network traffic to figure it out.
Knock on wood, I haven't seen a BSOD on any of my Win7 installs yet and I've been running it for about 2.5 years. Also what bloat? Honestly there isn't any on a good install. Unless you're installing a Server version with every service possible on what will be used as a workstation, there isn't any bloat with a fresh install. Now on the other hand, if you install any Symantec products such as Nortan Antivirus, yeah you're screwed then with bloat.
Maybe you have some hardware problems? Buying those cheap Chinese computer parts maybe?
Not 20% of all windows PCs. 20% of all the PCs that were purchased through unsecure Chinese supply chain. Read the entire line you quoted next time.
Pretty regularly, almost daily in fact. But it's the crappy AMD drivers, not Windows that's the culprit.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
- Armadillos question leper colony over recent outbreaks
- Rats riot in town over use of plague victims in warfare, demand protection for their fleas
- Man promoted to county Showers Inspector for realizing he was the one giving everyone foot fungus and seeming concerned
It's a rare case of literarily correct irony. Let's cherish it.
Newspapers landing on the front porch with headlines of this story.
Voice-over: "This is why you should have a right to buy a computer without an OS."
Didn't VMS have ACL's before NT existed?
David Cutler went to Microsoft from DEC and many VMS design features found their way into the NT kernel. The use of 32 priority levels is often cited as an example.
Pause the Startrek and re-read the post. Read it again until you see your error.
The backscatter from that botnet is most annoying!
http://riskman.typepad.com/perilocity/2012/08/festi-botnet-infesting-the-world-july-2012.html
Anyway, it is a simple question: why do you write with this style?
I don't know, but can only hypothesize that he's a teenager trying to look "kewl". He doesn't realise how ignorant and foolish it makes him look.
Free Martian Whores!
Pause the Startrek
I understand the individual words, but put together in this manner they have a meaning I don't understand.
ACL's which MAC is basically an analog of
P.S. => ++ACL is an anagram of MAC.
Am I the only person who is worried about a corporation taking over "cyber" issues as a law enforcement agency? I know there are loopholes that let MS act on behalf of the federal government (I saw an explanation of this once, but don't remember the details), but now MS is a world-wide law enforcement agency taking down anyone and everyone they want to? They've been convicted of a monopoly, funded the SCO legal actions, and are virulently anti-free software. And they've just released Windows 8, which takes computers a step away from general-purpose computing into a model where MS approves all apps and licenses software developers. On top of this, they get plenary multi-national legal powers? This doesn't pass the smell test.
Also what bloat?
Ah, the inexperience of youth. I haven't seen a program or OS in twenty years that wasn't bloated. There was bloat even back in the DOS days -- I had a program I wrote and ran on a 16k computer. I rewrote it in Clipper, and the 16k program, after it compiled, was over 400k. That is bloat!
I wrote a battle tanks game on a 4k Sinclair computer (in hand-assembled machine code since there was no assembler) that took maybe 500 bytes. There is a Windows version that is nearly identical in gameplay and features to the one I wrote, except it's in color (the Sinclair had no color) and it's 4 megs -- a thousand times as big as the one I wrote. If that's not bloat, I don't know what is.
However, ALL of today's OSes and apps are bloated. Even damned web pages are bloated! It isn't just MS, it's the times themselves.
Free Martian Whores!
Some things never change.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Living in China I see that pirated versions of Microsoft Windows and Office, are the norm not the exception. It is actually difficult to buy the legit software. I remember hunting all over several cities looking for a real Windows 7 CD when it first came out to no avail. If you want the real software, there are only a few PC suppliers who ship with it pre installed. Small local dealers will use pirated software. But the problem is exacerbated because of peoples love for the familiar. Most people in China still like windows XP. I have seen new machines arrive with Windows 7 installed only to see the owner take it to a shop and have a pirated Windows XP installed instead.
The story also missed that while the pirated Windows comes pre-installed with malware, it also it comes pre installed with antivirus and firewalls that have been modified to ignore/allow the malware.
16K? Luxury!
The Babbage machine was the only true computer without bloat.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Tons of accurate data on that account (discussed it before) -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3115271&cid=41327417
Here -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3115271&cid=41325809
* ROTFLMAO!
(QUESTION - How do your words taste now that you must eat them, flavored with the "bitter taste of SELF-DEFEAT" & spiced with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH?)
APK
P.S.=> One thing I absolutely LOVE is making a "writing style troll" like Hazel Bergeron "eat his words" by using literally 100's of my upward modded posts that utterly TRASH their "critiques" with ease, and yes, FACTS!
... apk