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Pumping Out Noise

Adrian Lane November 18, 2008 No Comments

I kind of get a chuckle from articles like this recent series at Dark Reading on phishing, spam and malware. First came the contradictory posts, both posting that Phishing Attacks are reaching record highs, while simultaneously trumpeting that the king of spam and botnets had been shut down. I don’t suppose it dawned on the editors that if the channel that conveys the phishing attacks is “shut down”, then we are not likely to see “Record Highs.” Then there is the headline that November 24th, the biggest shopping day of the year, could be a “Black Monday” in terms of malware threats … “PC Tools predicted Nov. 24 would be the most active day for malware threats after analyzing worldwide virus data on more 500,000 machines and data from last year’s holiday season”. Then again, maybe not: “And while spam and malware typically surge during the holiday season, this year may actually be a little less active than in years past, says Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG Technologies. No one should be especially worried about Nov. 24 …”. Um, yeah. I am all for articles with interesting & topical information, and I understand the need to balance both sides of an issue, but if you are going to use attention grabbing headlines about some huge threat, you should at least provide some links or direction on what to do about it. Missing from all of this was a singularly relevant piece of useful information that most end users could easily use to help themselves in the battle against phishing and malware attacks, namely: DON’T CLICK EMBEDDED EMAIL LINKS. Share:

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Going On The Offense

Rich November 18, 2008 No Comments

Brian Krebs posted a follow up article on the takedown of fraudulent hosting provider McColo (facilitated by his initial reporting last week). If you think all the nasties out there are hosted in Russia or China, you should really read his article. McColo’s servers weren’t sending out the actual spam; they functioned as the command and control infrastructure for some of the world’s biggest botnets. For those of you who don’t know, spam is rarely sent from static servers anymore; it originates from botnets scattered around the world that are directed by their control network to issue once in a lifetime offers for the best possible deals on male enhancement products. (It’s nice to know everyone has small weewees and lasts about 8 seconds, since otherwise this stuff wouldn’t be so profitable). Since the spam originates from tens of thousands of different systems, it makes it nearly impossible to blacklist based just on IP address. McColo hosted major components of the command infrastructure for spewing out your totally legitimate university diplomas (for a small fee). All those little bots are still out there, but no one is telling them what to do. As Krebs reports, it’s only a matter of time before the network owners reassert control and we can get back to purchasing discount medications and finding true love in former Soviet countries. But what if we took control ourselves and locked out the network? Those servers are still sitting in some building in California, and the ISPs still control the IP addresses. Imagine what we could do if we sent in a research team (or law enforcement) to commandeer all those bots and lock the bad guys out. Yes folks, this is just fantasy today. We don’t have the legal framework to execute such a project without creating risk for the good guys involved. Sure, we could use the botnet to patch all the compromised systems, but that’s effectively breaking into someone’s computer and making changes. I dream of a day when we can more effectively take the fight to the bad guys without worrying about going to jail ourselves. There’s absolutely no chance we can continue this fight indefinitely if we’re always on the defense. But we’re a long way off from having the legal framework and institutions to effectively stand up for ourselves. Share:

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