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153 Comments
- CVL4317, on 05/04/2009, -2/+171finally a cool war.
- dvsbastard, on 05/05/2009, -2/+116Uh... when they hijacked the botnet, why couldn't an update be issued much in the same way to ensure the original controllers could not regain control?!
- chadsexingtime, on 05/05/2009, -1/+81All my financial passwords are series of clicks and growls into a mic.
- mithrasinvictus, on 05/05/2009, -1/+51If you are on a compromised system nothing is safe.
- r3zonance, on 05/05/2009, -0/+42"P.S Digg, fix the ***** bouncing comment box already!"
And I thought that was just me. - mfreeland, on 05/05/2009, -0/+41How do they come up with a range like $83,000 to $83 million? Hmm, definitely 83 something.
- Izzmo, on 05/04/2009, -4/+45This is why I don't save passwords for my financial websites.. I would rather just forget them :P
- inactive, on 05/05/2009, -10/+47Windows users... oh crap
- Naidel, on 05/05/2009, -2/+37Hospital equipment running Windows scares me.
- phenom2k7, on 05/05/2009, -0/+33"Almost 300,000 unique login credentials were gathered over the time the researchers controlled the botnet, including 56,000 passwords gathered in a single hour using "simple replacement rules" and a password cracker."
What do they mean by "simple replacement rules"? And what would these password crackers be used on? Most websites, web applications are very aware of the number of login attempts and will suspend that session and or suspend the account. Once your in someones system, why would you need to use a password cracker if you can log keystroke activity.
P.S Digg, fix the ***** bouncing comment box already! - nurbsenvi, on 05/05/2009, -0/+32It's cool until some geeky 15 year old genius bastard takes control of your credit card.
- mithrasinvictus, on 05/05/2009, -3/+28That would mean manipulating someone else's property without their consent, it would open them up to lawsuits. And the poor fools would probably get infected again anyway because they don't know how to use it responsibly. They might have sent them a message, though.
- brandnewx, on 05/05/2009, -1/+25That may be a bad idea. You have to type the passwords every time, and that is what the bot is expecting you to do. They will record your keystrokes and relay it to the bot master.
- timishue, on 05/05/2009, -7/+31because a botnet consisting of the 240 mac users would be much less effective o_O
- Louis11, on 05/05/2009, -3/+24If you read the PDF, which by your statement I assume you didn't, the infected machines included critical systems. As such, an update (even a minor one) sent by the researchers, could have unintentionally interrupted these systems (i.e. Hospital equipment . . .)
- nurbsenvi, on 05/05/2009, -8/+28Or ignored.
- sockpuppets, on 05/05/2009, -1/+21You type like a bot.
- unusualbob, on 05/05/2009, -0/+20Why hasn't a greyhat created a botnet that intentionally infects vulnerable computers only to install AVG free (or something similar) and lock down the security settings? Seems like a good idea to me.
- Gloony, on 05/05/2009, -0/+19I suggest a small course in All-Caps Management.
It's usually a debilitating symptom of something deeper, however, so you may want to follow up with a psychiatrist. - enantiodromia, on 05/05/2009, -0/+19I always wondered why the good guys didn't just rent a botnet, then instruct the botnet to destroy itself.
Do the botnet herders inspect the commands before they are sent to their zombie army? - ScionAltera, on 05/05/2009, -0/+19I ran across a worm a few years ago that exploited a flaw in phpbb. It installed itself through MySQL injection, patched the phpbb install to fix the exploit, then got apache to run it so it could look for other hosts with unpatched phpbb installs. Similar idea, anyway...
- Ben1220, on 05/05/2009, -0/+16closer to 90% tbh
- AlexCrawford, on 05/05/2009, -0/+16HACK THE PLANET.
- pradador, on 05/05/2009, -3/+18Because when you cut one of its heads off, 5 more take its place.
- sockpuppets, on 05/05/2009, -0/+15That's what the green thumb is for. -->
- enantiodromia, on 05/05/2009, -11/+26Linux users not mentioned in this story is more like it.
People have been owning linux boxes for a very long time now. In fact, it used to be a sport. - alpha88, on 05/05/2009, -0/+15It really doesn't matter whether they type the password or save the password elsewhere, if they're on a zombie machine, they're ***** either way.
- ZeNiTH456, on 05/05/2009, -1/+15Some botnets are controlled by IRC channels, this is easy to send commands to a large group of bots this way. So it may be possible.
I've downloaded some of their infected programs which contained instructions to get to their IRC channel where I posed as a bot to see what passwords the admins sent the bots while executing commands. After a few hours I figured out which botnet they were running and executed the removal command and instantly all the bots left the network. This was a pretty small botnet ~2000 but still felt damn good. - solvable, on 05/05/2009, -1/+14Is that you Zero Cool?
- MxM111, on 05/05/2009, -0/+13A question:
Is it legal to hijack hijackers on other people PCs? - StrangeFamous, on 05/05/2009, -0/+12Mess with the best, die like the rest.
- iritegood, on 05/05/2009, -1/+13There's no real security in, say, Firefox passwords. If I were on your computer, and you were logged on, I could find out all your saved passwords.
- AHippie, on 05/05/2009, -0/+10"In just ten days, Torpig apparently obtained credentials of 8,310 accounts..."
$10-$1000 per account, I'm guessing. - mithrasinvictus, on 05/05/2009, -2/+12Also note the specific mention of activeX. It might not be the only "window" but still...
- mithrasinvictus, on 05/05/2009, -0/+10The victims were not doing something illegal. Cleaning their PC's without consent might have side effects and it could make the cleaners liable.
- thisissami, on 05/05/2009, -1/+11I'm confused by your username.
- Myztry, on 05/05/2009, -1/+11I was quite surprised the first time Firefox imported Internet Explorer passwords. Perhaps they are still crypted(?) but they appear to be usable by other software anyway.
- JasonHaley, on 05/05/2009, -0/+10what if you are blind and chained to a chair with your hands restrained in front of digg as your mother reads off digg comments for you? And then your mother reads "finally a cool war" and you can only *nod approvingly* (b/c you're gagged too) and your mother then goes "Ok, I'll just write that you're nodding, Jason" and you're like "MMPH MMMPH" (b/c you're gagged remember?) and trying to direct your eyes to the green thumbs up sign to give her a signal but she won't do it... she never has. She never ***** will!
-Typed by Jason Haley's Mother. - r3zonance, on 05/05/2009, -2/+12"Maybe those critical systems with poor security deserve to go down."
However you see it, that is NOT a judgement call to be made arbitrarily by some third-party with no vested interest in the systems is it?
What on earth is wrong with digg users? - Vosona, on 05/05/2009, -12/+21Nobody worth stealing from uses Linux.
- shandromand, on 05/05/2009, -0/+9I dunno about legal, but it sure sounds awesome! :)
- SuicideMouse, on 05/05/2009, -2/+11That's a hefty claim.
- Rivetgeek, on 05/05/2009, -0/+8Its likely pulling lmhashes.
- mithrasinvictus, on 05/05/2009, -3/+1191% according to wikipedia/marketshare.
But maybe he meant 99.9% of all clueless users? - austroLogi, on 05/05/2009, -1/+9How hard is it to not click on 32kb exe and scr files that come as email attachments or sites that you are unfamiliar with?
I swear some of these people deserve to get scammed. - fenny45, on 05/05/2009, -0/+8The passwords saved in the browser aren't encrypted at all. It's kind of scary.
- alpha88, on 05/05/2009, -0/+8Not really SuicideMouse, it's sort of the same thing as a honeypot for worms.
When you get infected by a trojan controlled over IRC, you can inspect the packets being received (and more importantly, the server and port being used to give the commands), and hijack a botnet fairly easily.
However, most (not all, but most) IRC botnets are script kiddies using an rBot, rxBot, phatbot, etc. that they compiled without even reading the source code and just modifying the config file. Meaning the IRC server will probably be insecure, and you can pose as a bot and hijack it without much effort, but the only thing you'll be hijacking are probably 50-100 zombie computers, not a huge amount by any means.
The only IRC botnets that aren't controlled by script kiddies, do not always connect to the IRC channel – they only do so when they're told. And these are generally large linux server botnets (thousands or tens of thousands of servers) run on very secure IRC servers, with passwords for the server, the channel, and with everyone except the owner given no permission to do anything, making it much more difficult to hijack. The same zombie servers can also be run via php or other methods rather than just IRC. - shandromand, on 05/05/2009, -0/+7I don't bother logging into my bank sites anymore. Its too depressing to see how quickly they deflate after payday. :(
- Gloony, on 05/05/2009, -0/+7A crack using simple replacement rules is basically a dictionary attack with extra rules for substituting the letters in the dictionary for other letters and numbers for letters.
VV = W
1 = l
3 = E and so on.
This can reduce the complexity of a password by several orders of magnitude. - Atario, on 05/05/2009, -0/+7Because then the original botnet scum wouldn't get infected with the payload when they--
I've already said too much. -
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