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The BBC HoneyPot

news.bbc.co.uk — Sneakily this was an image rather than a Windows dialogue box so clicking anywhere on it, even the "cancel" button, got the download going. The download installed automatically and kicked off a tsunami of background downloading. The software was so sneaky that it tried to stop this traffic being seen by injecting it into the IE processes.

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 10, 2006

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31 Comments

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  • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -4/+47The ad was for you, the only one without firefox and adblock apparently. ;)
  • protocoI, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13You sure used "interesting" interestingly.
  • endgame, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17Off Topic:

    WTF why is there a Geek Squad ad on this site. Wrong demographic by far...lol. That ad should be on the AOL page!
  • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Interesting enough it's not sophisticated, either.
  • Bob042, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Wow, clicking on shady ads does shady things! Thanks BBC! Although, I do love the graphic neatly labeled "The Internet" in the middle.

    I wonder what exactly they did to the machine before they declared it "impossible" to fix?
  • Hulka, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12zing!
  • Bullsnot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"Wow, clicking on shady ads does shady things! Thanks BBC!"

    Obviously people are still doing it and the problem is still persisting. The only solution so far is to teach safer computing habits to all internet users, which is exactly what this article is doing. This may be too basic for you, but the word needs to be spread, with the emphasize made on the large scale and fast impact these things have on a users system.
  • raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7You know the incredible thing is that the people who do this crap, who fill your face with unwanted junk ads and porn actually think that you will be enticed into buying their stuff.

    I mean you might want to kill them... But buy anything off them? Hardly!!!
  • Anpheus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Once a virus has broken your security, short of a complete change of OS (and mounting the original partition as non-executable, read-only, and taking steps to ensure you don't copy any data from it) you cannot guarantee anything.

    Remember, rootkits, trojans, etc, are designed to hide themselves. Once the computer is infected, you can't guarantee it's cleaned ever again.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6when you use a honeypot, you often do it with an unpatched system... you catch more flys with more holes.

    But with an unpatched system, you often dont have to do anything before it is infected with worms in less than 30 minutes being online.
    (i've tried it before, took like 15 minutes before th machine was constantly rebooting from sasser)
  • Stemster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5And here I was expecting a nice looking British Bird.
  • Bullsnot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Gee, I like your product and all this great advertisement that just poped up. This new internet stuff is great, how did they know I wanted to add 3 additional inches. Only now I can't click your wonderful ad because my system is overloaded. Maybe I'll click it later.
  • addisonj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6my thoughts exactly, i have seen some computers that are completely filled with spyware, and while a reinstall is much easier, you can still usually recover from it.

    The sad fact is that i don't think any place you would pay to do it would go through the hassle, they don't really care, i have cleaned up horrible machines for friends and family that i know retail locations would not touch or simply don't know how to get rid of everything. I would say most of the time, even a whole gambit of spy-bot and adaware and kapresesky won't pick up everything, most the time i just end up manually removing anything left behind.
  • goodbyepolar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Quote from the article: "many fake security warnings that pop-up unprompted thanks to loopholes in Windows Messenger"

    Wasn't Windows messenger service automatically disabled with SP2?
  • dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No they don't, they simply hope to infect enough people so that one or two will click the ads.
    Thats why spam is still around, unlike psyical mass-mailing, you only need a few click-thought to make it cost-effective.. Same with spyware
    - Ben
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3maybe they should have said not worth it to fix.
    and yes after some trojans it is often just safer to kill the machine.

    although i will agree i have seen many a machine deemed unfixable by the squad and they were just being lazy.
  • sjbdallas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think they were supposed to capitalize Internet though.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Zyk0tiK: They make pay-per-click money. They're not getting money for selling products, they're getting money for PCs that report their software is installed, or that someone is taking some action related to a company's product.
  • kurupt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I believe you've misunderstood.
    Refer to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_%28computing%29

    While the one listed here at the BBC may not wow or dazzle you, the premise is the whole purpose. By doing this, those in the internet security sector are able to find out more about these types of malware and figure out ways to counteract them in the future.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think this is the most vague article I've ever read about spyware.

    "We clicked on some interesting stuff that did interesting things then we had some interesting tea. Oh bother."
  • NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sadly enough spam and pop ups get about 2% of the people. Mail ads only get responses from about 1%. Its cheaper and gets you more sales.
  • Zyk0tiK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The thing I don't get is how the companies that create spyware and adware, etc. expect to make money. I mean, how can they make money when they kill so many people's computers? I just don't get it.
  • suprchunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Oooh, BURN!
  • johnie1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2they don't exist
  • pupeno, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Next time, get the definition of "hacker" correctly.
  • PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3bury me.
  • davidod87, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Nobody here is moronic to let this happen. Marked as lame.
  • mkayatta, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5I guess that's the most honeypot digg users are going to get
  • MrBobby, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1GNU/Linux FTW
  • IVIystic, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1lol to endgame Re: the geeksquad ad. Look in the upper right of the comments page though... sure enough... there's an AOL adbox too!
  • maffiou, on 10/12/2007, -19/+3Not exactly the most sofisticated honeypot but still interresting

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