Botnets
By dk ~ May 13th, 2008, 8:59 pm. Filed under: News.
There are two interesting articles about botnets I have noticed in today’s headlines.
The botnet business by Vitaly Kamluk, Viruslist
Today, botnets are among the main sources of illegal income on the Internet and they are powerful weapons in the hands of cybercriminals. It is totally unrealistic to expect that criminals will relinquish such an effective tool. Security experts view the future with some trepidation as they anticipate the continued development of botnet technologies.
What makes botnets increasingly dangerous is that they are becoming easier and easier to use. In the near future, even children will be able to manage them. The ability to gain access to a network of infected computers is determined by the amount of money cybercriminals have at their disposal rather than whether they have specialized knowledge. Additionally, the prices in the well-developed and structured botnet market are relatively low.
It may not only be cybercriminals who have an interest in creating international botnets. Such botnets can be used by governments [my selection] or individuals to exert political pressure in tense situations. In addition, anonymous control of infected machines that does not depend on their geographic location could be used to provoke cyber conflicts. All this takes is organizing a cyber attack on one country’s servers from computers located in another country.
Networks which unite the resources of tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of infected computers, have the potential to be extremely dangerous – a potential which (luckily!) has not yet been fully exploited. Virtually all this cyber power stems from infected home computers, which make up the overwhelming majority of zombie machines exploited by cybercriminals.
Full article: http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=204792003
U.S. military to build botnet? by Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus
The capability to overwhelm attackers would help the nation deter attacks against its systems, Col. Charles Williamson III, a staff judge advocate for the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, stated in an opinion piece in the Armed Forces Journal. Military bases could use outdated PCs as nodes on its “botnet”, replacing their hard drives with a simple flash drives.
Full story: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/737
