Slashdot Mirror
Obama Administration Wants More Legal Power To Disrupt Botnets
Trailrunner7 writes: The Obama administration has proposed an amendment to existing United Stated federal law that would give it a more powerful tool to go after botnets such as GameOver Zeus, Asprox and others. In recent years, Justice, along with private security firms and law enforcement agencies in Europe, have taken down various incarnations of a number of major botnets, including GameOver Zeus and Coreflood. These actions have had varying levels of success, with the GOZ takedown being perhaps the most effective, as it also had the effect of disrupting the infrastructure used by the CryptoLocker ransomware.
In order to obtain an injunction in these cases, the government would need to sue the defendants in civil court and show that its suit is likely to succeed on its merits. "The Administration's proposed amendment would add activities like the operation of a botnet to the list of offenses eligible for injunctive relief. Specifically, the amendment would permit the department to seek an injunction to prevent ongoing hacking violations in cases where 100 or more victim computers have been hacked. This numerical threshold focuses the injunctive authority on enjoining the creation, maintenance, operation, or use of a botnet, as well as other widespread attacks on computers using malicious software (such as "ransomware" )," assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell wrote.
In order to obtain an injunction in these cases, the government would need to sue the defendants in civil court and show that its suit is likely to succeed on its merits. "The Administration's proposed amendment would add activities like the operation of a botnet to the list of offenses eligible for injunctive relief. Specifically, the amendment would permit the department to seek an injunction to prevent ongoing hacking violations in cases where 100 or more victim computers have been hacked. This numerical threshold focuses the injunctive authority on enjoining the creation, maintenance, operation, or use of a botnet, as well as other widespread attacks on computers using malicious software (such as "ransomware" )," assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell wrote.
Declare bot-nets a utility -- then regulate them.
(ducks and runs)
more freedom in what it can be allowed to label as a botnet. How about any selection of computers in any government, or computers belonging to a large company in a competing market, or a competing foreign economy?
TSIA.
Could have stopped at "wants more legal power."
Actually, the headline could have been simply shortened to: Obama Administration Wants More Legal Power!
And whatever administration that comes next, will also want more legal power.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
they know that only thing capable of challenging the status quo of espionage landscape are the botnets. Basically, the Government thugs want a monopoly on espionage-over-ip type of business model. While using the botnets that they do take over in their own missions, with plausible deniability all over. "i swear, its those russian ZEUS botherders that did it"... except like... there were jokes about zeus in 2007, how only prepubescent kids use it...
Not only are THEY not playing by the rules, they want to make an appearance like they are all nice and lawful, while being just as criminal as botherders and operators.
This is disgusting faggotry. You want to take over a botnet, you do it. Or you dont. Your resourcefulness is the limit...
Using law to fight in the digital arena is... i wanted to write dishonorable, but lets face it, none of you bastards know/care about the meaning of the word honor, or why it is important. And so it goes.
Doesn't the already existing Computer abuse and fraud act already give his administration all the power they need to go after botnet operators? If not, can somebody explain to me what authority it doesn't give him that he claims he needs?
If you have a malicious device connected to an ISP, the ISP should be the one to disconnect it. The problem is that the target of the malicious device is often on another ISP.
Rather than allowing the government to be the hammer and force people offline, the government should create a coordination point where attacks can be reported and the proper ISP and their customers alerted to the activity.
One of the activities could be creating OSS that allows for firewall logs to send attack information to this central resource.
Another could be creating a help page that assists end users with understanding why they're having this issue and how to correct it.
Finally, proposing a Internet remediation zone would be the best end result. Instead of pulling the cord on infected devices, put them on a standard ACL/web filter that only allows them to software updates and AV signatures.
These are harder tasks for any one ISP to do, but a good thing for government to do.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
DoJ has declaired that all computers must join the Federal Botnet so they can't be absorbed into other botnets under a new executive order by the president. In other news, a large new botnet is reaking havoc on the internet. President Obama seeks new powers to deal with this emergent threat. Attacks have increased since the formation of the FedNet, and law enforcement is puzzled as to where the attacks are originating. Homeland Security has requested 900 billion dollars to meet this new mystery threat. This report brought to you by Dumbidum the perscription drug that makes you dumber and believe anything the television says. Side effects include obesity, diabetes, general statements with no meaning, defence of the liberal postion, defence of the conservative postion, divorce, screwed up kids who don't know what gender they are, rectal cancer, and death.
Man, the more I think of it, I REALLY like the idea of a standard remediation zone that all ISPs could deploy.
DNS would be filtered, only DNS responses to hosts on the allowed list. I would even be ok with MitM changes to DNS queries in this case.
Again, the idea is that you are only placed in this zone when your device has attacked another.
Once you think you've fixed the issue, they could allow all DNS traffic again, but watch your traffic to see if the attacks resume. This could be automated, so the end user doesn't have to constantly call the ISP.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
... this ransomware shit is tiresome and needs to be hammered into the ground. I can't find the bastards but the government can't hide a fucking thing.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What power could they possibly need, aside from the extrajudicial executions they already perform?
People in Hell want ice water...
Government always wants more power....
Declare bot-nets a utility -- then regulate them.
(ducks and runs)
http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/11/22/propagandastan/
If you go to the link above you would know that the government of the United States of America gets to do anything it wants and nobody can do anything about it
Oh great!
This would open the door to even more unsolicited calls from "Microsoft Windows" telling you that you have a problem and offering to supply a fix. Just a minor change to the script 'virus' now becomes 'botnet' and away they go again
This scam is gradually dying off (in the UK at least -- I almost mis the opportunity to prolong the conversation and annoy the scammers) but I can well foresee it wakening up gain if ISPs were charged with telling their customers that they have a problem.
It's a nice idea in principle but there are so many potential issues with it (botnet activity on a NAT'd IP condemning multiple users, IP address changing and need to keep up with who is blocked and how/whether to carry the block on next connection ....).
Dumbidum? Does It have electrolytes?
Capture their DNS and have it be a website.
Coordinate with the Ad Council to get them to run PSA showing the standard redirect page and how to check the SSL cert of that page. Remind the viewers that this is the ONLY way their ISP will notify them of an issue and that your hardware and software vendor will never call you.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
So can we now expect the Republicans declare to a crusade to promote the creation of botnets? ...or have I misunderstood how American democracy works these days?
make using Windows illegal... *ducks and runs like hell*
Dunno.
:| )
Look how well the whole DMCA thing works. Pretty much anyone can toss out a bogus claim and have all sorts of things taken offline without a whole lot of investigation done about the legitimacy of said claim.
Imagine taking a network offline from the ISP level due to some bogus botnet claim. Getting your YouTube video taken down is one thing, knocking your entire business offline is quite another. Some may consider that to be a strawman, but I try to think about what some idiot with nothing else to do with their time would / could do with such a process in place.
Some very well thought out rules need to be in place in addition to requiring more than one entity to make the decision. Otherwise, there isn't anything to stop the government from politicizing said new power to shut down sites they dislike, ( say . . . Wikileaks, or The Pirate Bay, North Korea, whatever ) by simply declaring the network to be a bot-net participant. ( Our government would never lie right ? RIGHT ?
Always, ALWAYS question the motives of any governmental request for additional powers. Like campaign promises, they're only used to get their foot in the door and once given away, they're very difficult to take back.
Imagine taking a network offline from the ISP level due to some bogus botnet claim.
That's exactly my point. They're wanting the ability to take you completely offline. I'm proposing a middle ground where you're not knocked completely offline, and getting back online can be automated.
Always, ALWAYS question the motives of any governmental request for additional powers.
We agree, that is why I want them to be a coordinator, not the executioner.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
they came for the Botnets.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
a coordination point where attacks can be reported and the proper ISP and their customers alerted to the activity.
Like a CERT-US of some sort? The submission mentioning civil courts is weird. Surely such public danger and disturbance causing crimes committed with a computer are already under an item in the criminal law of the US? It's almost like terrorism, after all.
Because in the end, that's where this goes.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
How are they currently taking down botnets? At what point do courts block the current procedure, if any?
You cannot show an injunction to a computer program and expect it to comply, so there's a basic technical step missing from this discussion. I understand neither what they're doing technically, nor what they can't do legally but can do technically (if there's even anything in that bucket at all).
How are the ISPs responding currently? Is there any current international cooperation for shutting down offenders based on good faith evidence?
I would tend to agree the ISP responsible for allowing a user to transmit traffic on the internet has the ethical obligation to squash malicious criminal action that is harming other internet users. I'd also like them to be the first line, but I think the government or better yet an independent international team should have abilities that would go beyond those of the ISP as just shutting down access isn't always going to be the first best path toward analysis and prosecution of the attack coordinator.
Why is Obama, Congress and Courts even bothering to go through the motions of PRETENDING half the stuff they do is legal. We know it's not, they aren't fooling us, and least the smart ones and the dumb ones don't matter.
Either way, they get away with it because the NWO has enough players in enough key positions. They might as well just rule by decre.
Learn to code.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
er .. switch off all those compromised Windows Desktop computers out there clogging up the Intertubes ..