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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.
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.
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.
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.
"do not give them this power!
they can then 'schwartz you' if they want."
You are way late, see here about america...
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137
Reason doesn't work the way we thought it does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening (aka global revolt). i.e. they fear you stopping voting for politicians and causing social and political change because the democratic system is a sham.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttv6n7PFniY
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmUS--QCYY
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Security-Single-Superpower/dp/1608463656/
http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-Glennon/dp/0190206446/
Look at the following graphs:
http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju06F3Os64
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history: