Re: A serious threat to our national security




Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote:

I was just reading that right before Russia invaded
Georgia, there was a cyberattack on Georgia's basic
network infrastructure launched from the Botnets that
Bill Gates created through the above policies. I can
only conclude that Microsoft's ongoing refusal to make
a version of windows that cannot be remotely controlled
by criminals is now a serious threat to our national
security.

|
| http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/zombie_surge/
| Zombie network explosion: long shadow cast by SQL injection surge?
| Published Tuesday 2nd September 2008
|
| The number of compromised zombie PCs in botnet networks has quadrupled
| over the last three months, according to figures from the Shadowserver
| Foundation.
|
| Shadowserver tracks botnet activity and the number of command and
| control servers. It uses a variety of metrics to slice and dice its
| figures based in part on the entropy of botnet infections. The clear
| trend within these figures is upwards, with a rise in botnet numbers
| of 100,000 to 400,000 (if 30 day entropy is factored into equations)
| or from 20,000 to 60,000 (for five day entropy).
|
| Entropy of botnets is calculated on the basis that if no activity is
| seen from a specific IP for a number of days - either 30, 10 or five -
| then it is removed from the botnet count.
|
| Shadowserver figures suggest the number of command and control servers
| has actually decreased over the last month, following a spike in
| activity back in July.
|
| Security watchers at the Internet Storm Centre have a number of
| explanations for the rise in the zombie population.
|
| It could be that experienced botnet herders have got better at keeping
| control of compromised machines, or that more machines have been
| infected. Not much by way of email malware activity has been
| monitored, so if the latter explanation is true, then drive-by
| download attacks are playing a bigger role in spreading botnet client
| infestation. The recent rise in SQL injection attacks that plant
| malicious scripts on vulnerable servers could be to blame, but there's
| no hard data to support this plausible theory.
|
| Improved detection of web-based attacks may be needed to gauge the
| extent of the problem, according to security watchers at the Internet
| Storm Centre.
|
| "We are very good at tracking email-based malware (including
| lead-the-user-to-the-bad-website variety) and certainly network based
| attacks," writes ISC staffer John Bambenek. "Short of spidering the
| web on a consistent basis, it gets difficult to find infected sites
| for that malware. We at the ISC, and I'm sure many others, are working
| on ways to honeypot pure web-based attacks to capture this malware,
| but much work is left to be done."

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>


.

Relevant Pages

  • [Full-disclosure] mitigating botnet C&Cs has become useless
    ... In this post I ask the community about what you see, ... The subject line "why mitigating botnet C&Cs has become useless" is ... Most botnet C&Cs are a part of a larger group, such as an IRC network ... Simple - as it is simple, vs. a complex dynamic control channel. ...
    (Full-Disclosure)
  • [Full-disclosure] what can be done with botnet C&Cs? (fwd)
    ... what can be done with botnet C&C's? ... You can know who your compromised users are by watching flows to C&C's. ... Stop internal network infections. ... will actually help the Internet is if you take care of it on your own ...
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  • detecting network crowd surges
    ... of the user IPs on an ISP's cable modem network or all of the IPs at ... to do this in realtime with firewall, network, ids, netflow, .etc ... Most of the operational stuff I've run across for detecting botnets ... different ways to manage a botnet. ...
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  • Re: Massive botnet loose on Windows XP.
    ... The botnet has been in use since February and is hosted in the Ukraine, ... The cybercriminals were enable to infect end-user computers through ... legitimate websites with malware that bypassed 90% of common anti-virus ... Finjan alerted US and UK authorities and notified government departments ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Massive botnet loose on Windows XP.
    ... The botnet has been in use since February and is hosted in the Ukraine, according to a report by security firm Finjan. ... The cybercriminals were enable to infect end-user computers through legitimate websites with malware that bypassed 90% of common anti-virus software. ... Finjan alerted US and UK authorities and notified government departments and businesses whose computers were part of the botnet. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)