Botnet vs. Botnet: Can A Good Botnet Block A Bad One?

from the battle-of-the-botnets dept

Last year we wrote about how rival online scammer gangs had their botnets fighting each other by disabling trojans of competing botnets on their computers -- but it appears that some researchers have a different idea for creating a "good" botnet to fight the "bad" botnets being used for denial of service attacks (found via Slashdot). This is quite different than some older proposals to create "good worms" that go about automatically patching infected machines (which are wide open to abuse). Instead, the idea is rather creative. It involves setting up a distributed system of computers that effectively act as a way station for connect requests -- which then wait for the actual server to request the inbound requests. This prevents the server from being overloaded (though, I would imagine it could slow down access somewhat). Either way, it's nice to see efforts under way to stop such zombie botnets. Hopefully someone isn't sitting on a patent for such an idea and waiting to sue, like we've seen with other security measures.

Filed Under: botnets, denial of service, zombies

Do ISPs Ignore Security Researchers Who Point Out Zombied Machines?

from the not-such-a-good-thing dept

Over the last few years, we've all heard stories about how organized crime groups have taken to using botnets of "zombied" computers to run all sorts of scams and spam campaigns. ISPs have been somewhat slow to react. While they try to use fairly blunt instruments, like cutting off certain ports, many don't seem to have a very good process in place for tracking down and stopping customers whose machines have become unwitting members in a botnet. In fact, security researchers are growing frustrated that when they come across evidence of a hijacked computer, ISPs don't respond at all when told that a customer is causing trouble. There certainly are a few ISPs that are careful to help get rid of botnets, doing things like quarantining or cutting off certain users from their internet access until their machines are cleaned up, but most of the bigger ISPs don't appear to do very much at all. Of course, there is the other side of this story -- which is that when ISPs may be too proactive, it can often snag people whose machines aren't actually doing anything wrong. But, it certainly seems like completely ignoring reports with evidence of a botnet may be going to the opposite extreme.

Filed Under: botnets, isps, zombies