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Botnets! Botnets for sale! 300 dolla!
If you are old enough, you probably remember those shows which had some shady character calling someone over to a darkened corner or alleyway and saying “Psst! Hey, buddy! Need a watch?” He would then open up his trenchcoat and reveal a few (dozen) samples of stolen or faked Rolex watches.
As I looked through my GMail account the other day I noticed that I was starting to get a lot of spam for fake Rolex watches. It seems that the shady character of yesteryear has now moved to the Internet.
As I looked at the headers of those messages, I noticed that most of them were coming from IP addresses that would appear to belong to compromised machines. That is, they belong to people who have been tricked into opening a virus and so opening a window for someone else to control their connection to the Internet.
Now, Kaspersky Labs, a Russian antivirus company, said Thursday that criminals are behind 90 percent of malicious code. That is to say that the stereotypical teenaged hacker geek sitting alone in his bedroom with a box of cold, stale pizza and a face full of zits isn’t what we should be looking for. That kid (and the others like him) only accounts for about 10% of the bad stuff out there. The rest is run not just by criminals, but usually organized crime.
According to CNet News, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Steve Martinez warned last month that Eastern European gangs were turning increasingly to cybercrime, mainly because of the lack of security.
Further, they’ll do it all. One time might get you a keylogger installed that will capture your user ID and password the next time you go to pay bills or look at your bank statement online. The next time might get a “zombie” program installed so that your computer will become one of hundreds in a “botnet” used by spammers to pump (no pun intended) their Viagra and Fake Rolex Watch ads.
Now, lest you think that the hackers want to actually do it all, they don’t. They’re in business and there is money to be made. By selling that botnet. According to Kaspersky, you can buy a botnet with 5,000 machines for $300.
If you don’t want to be one of those Internet users whose machine is sold into virtual slavery, then just be careful where you go, be careful of whom you trust, and most of all, keep your anti-virus and firewall software up to date.
MickC @ December 10, 2004