Macro11_1 Posted December 27, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network "By 2007 it has developed partner and affiliate marketing techniques in many countries to provide a method for organized crime to target victims internationally." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet "The botnet reportedly is powerful enough as of September 2007 to force entire countries off the Internet, and is estimated to be capable of executing more instructions per second than some of the world's top supercomputers." http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=48833 "North American businesses spent more than $17.5 billion in security alarms for their buildings, but only $6.2 billion on information security measures." Wow, this stuff scares the crap out of me. I mean, I am more scared of this stuff than I am of China, Korea, and even the US. p.s. I did quick forum searches to see if any one posted anything like this before, and I did not come up with anything. What do you all think? 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted December 27, 2008 You mean we're not discussing the surreptitious testing of biological warfare agents on isolated third-world communities? Little of this is news to me - unfortunately. Cybercrime is a multi-billion dollar growth industry, the major players are untouchable and the situations going to get much worse - especially if states start using cybercrime/terrorism as a form of war by proxy. 0 Share this post Link to post
Bashe Posted December 27, 2008 I did a joint research paper on botnets. Scary stuff. 0 Share this post Link to post
fraggle Posted December 27, 2008 Macro11_1 said:Wow, this stuff scares the crap out of me. I mean, I am more scared of this stuff than I am of China, Korea, and even the US.That's ok. Just go listen to The Conet Project and you'll change your mind. 0 Share this post Link to post
Udderdude Posted December 27, 2008 fraggle said:That's ok. Just go listen to The Conet Project and you'll change your mind. That's pretty freaky, but not really unexpected that countries still use it. 0 Share this post Link to post
Kyka Posted December 27, 2008 *reads That's some scary shit. *goes back to making Doom levels 0 Share this post Link to post
Creaphis Posted December 28, 2008 Kyka said:*reads That's some scary shit. *goes back to making Doom levels Ha, exactly. Considering there really isn't anything that one of us can do about this problem, this is really the only way we can react to it. The trouble is when people react this way to problems that they CAN help solve. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted December 28, 2008 What we CAN do is avoid becoming part of the problem. Being slightly paranoid helps in that respect. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted December 28, 2008 It's the evil anti-virus software companies that write viruses!!! *cough cough* Seriously though, I often wondered why there is like a fuckton of spyware and adware myself, which also has little resemblance to how older viruses worked. Traditional computer viruses that hid in the bootsector or infected .COM and .EXE files and when they activated, they fucked everything up pretty badly (by overwriting the FAT with garbage and other such subtleties) are all but gone today... Today, instead you find scripts, IE toolbars, worms, trojans and other pseudo-viruses that rely on windows start-up files, autorun or network crawling to keep working and propagating, and are much more subtle or even apparently symptom-less (I even know people who'd rather keep them instead of going through the pain of a disinfection). I've always wondered e.g. WHO does REALLY benefit from infecting e.g. an offline computer with a pesky autorun virus that causes unwanted random-ads to appear in an IE window or fucks up 100 system settings in order to go undetected? Is this considered effective advertising? Or do they really hope to gather any useful info? 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted December 28, 2008 I always figured that people made them as a means of effectively destroying a computer of someone that offended them, or that they have a personal vendetta against. But at this point it is rarely the case. I really don't know who would want to do this and why. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted December 28, 2008 The most commonly offered explanation nowadays is that the creators are after some form of revenue (either by hijacking your dial-up, popping up ads, intercepting your keystrokes, stealing passwords/accounts etc.) In the past they really did little more than blindly releasing a destructive construct upon unsuspecting users, and the effects were usually terminal (either .exe files were damaged, or whole disks were corrupted with garbage). Those modern "viruses" are more focused on ensuring spreading the infection and going as unnoticed as possible (although it's evident that the "author's" level has dropped considerably, some can be defeated just by using msconfig or regedit). 0 Share this post Link to post
Creaphis Posted December 28, 2008 I wish the motive was still to corrupt important servers or to blindly destroy. Simple corporate greed is such a boring form of evil. 0 Share this post Link to post
TomoAlien Posted December 29, 2008 Too bad that viruses don't display cool stuff that older viruses did, Marburg placed these red X symbols all over your desktop, or a virus that was called LsD displayed a colorful plasma. That was awesome, right? 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted December 29, 2008 I wonder if there's a Nobel Prize on offer for whoever develops a virus that infiltrates and destroys botnets? 0 Share this post Link to post
Creaphis Posted December 29, 2008 GreyGhost said:I wonder if there's a Nobel Prize on offer for whoever develops a virus that infiltrates and destroys botnets? Hey... that might work. We already know that these computers are sorely lacking in security, or else the bots wouldn't have managed to take hold. 0 Share this post Link to post
Espi Posted December 30, 2008 That's kind of like something I've thought of before. Why not make a virus of some sort that would do security updates? =p 0 Share this post Link to post
Mindless Rambler Posted December 30, 2008 Espi said:That's kind of like something I've thought of before. Why not make a virus of some sort that would do security updates? =p /thread 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted December 31, 2008 Espi said:That's kind of like something I've thought of before. Why not make a virus of some sort that would do security updates? =p 31st March 2009 - Microsoft unveils the ultimate PC security tool - Windows Anti-Anti-Virus Virus - incorporating the sum total of their accumulated computer/network security expertise. It's mission is to seek out unsecured computers and apply the latest patches to them without any user intervention. 1st April 2009 - Windows Anti-Anti-Virus Virus is released into-the-wild from an undisclosed location amidst great fanfare and celebration. The first unsecured computer encountered by Win A-A-V V is an Amiga 3000 which successfully resists all patch attempts. Faced with unexpectedly stiff resistance and having failed to install it's rootkit, Win A-A-V V cancels itself out and dies. 0 Share this post Link to post