http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2013\/06\/05\/microsoft-takes-down-botnets\/<\/p>\n
This story is interesting from a few directions – the claim is Bankers, Microsoft and the FBI have shut down 1000s of botnets being used to steal money by infecting computers with key loggers.<\/p>\n
Botnets are very sophisticated groups of hijacked computers that use a distributed command and control system to cause the group of computers to do things – like flood a web site with traffic to extort money to “just make it stop!”. The connection between that and key loggers is a bit not obvious.<\/p>\n
Botnets were designed to be untraceable using techniques that were not surprisingly developed first by government agencies to operate in secret in other countries. If you gather the IP addresses of the millions of computers activated in an attack, you only maybe peel back the first layer at great expense. The command and control is easily moved from computer to computer and the person actually controlling things (probably from Eastern Europe) has many layers of defenses, each set to warn the next layer if it has been compromised. All the combination is encrypted – that was the state of the art a decade ago – I have no idea what it is now. My main exposure was reading the story by the shields up guy and how he infiltrated a botnet.<\/p>\n
So what could Microsoft do to Windows to facilitate real time data gather that could be directly fed to the FBI to take out a botnet before it vanishes? While Microsoft controls Windows (and who really knows what are in their updates?), the infrastructure of botnets typically relies on IRC, which is *nix based.<\/p>\n
Oh, and the Guardian reports that FISA ordered Verizon to give up call detail records on all of its business customers, including domestic phone calls. This is basically what AT&T has already done and provided immunity.<\/p>\n
You see, when the 4th amendment says to be secure from search of your records, people might think their phone and bank records belong to the customer. Silly Wabbit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2013\/06\/05\/microsoft-takes-down-botnets\/ This story is interesting from a few directions – the claim is Bankers, Microsoft and the FBI have shut down 1000s of botnets being used to steal money by infecting computers with key loggers. Botnets are very sophisticated groups … Continue reading