Mega-D Botnet Overtakes Storm, Accounts for 32% of Spam 115
Stony Stevenson writes "The new Mega-D Botnet has overtaken the notorious Storm worm botnet as the largest single source of the world's spam according to security vendor Marshal. This botnet currently accounts for 32 percent of all spam, 11 percent more than the Storm botnet which peaked at 21 percent in September 2007. It started about 4 months ago but has been steadily increasing since then. It is also using news headlines to trick victims into opening the spam, a technique synonymous with the Storm worm."
Using Headlines to Trick People Into Clicking (Score:5, Funny)
It must work - I clicked on this article ...
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"Mega-D Botnet Overtakes Storm the Movie"
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imagine what they could do... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh..... Your...... God! (Score:1)
Nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam? What's that? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't quite get the spam thing anymore. It's solved. Spam is not annoying any more. Just use one of the big free email providers and you get relatively little spam. Even most corporations do a reasonable job with 3rd party spam filters. Sure, you still get it, but it's not annoying if it's a trickle.
Don't want to use a web interface? No problem, just get the free email service to fetch your mail, then download your filtered email by POP or IMAP. Okay, there's only one provider I know that lets you do that for free, but it probably has the best spam filtering too.
So you say all this spam is clogging up bandwidth? Well I bet it's still nothing compared with the bandwidth consumed by file sharing and video web sites. The economics of spam is changing, with fewer results per email sent, and more jail time per email sent, I reckon you'd have to be nuts to be a spammer these days.
Phishing on the other hand.. now that's bad.
Re:Spam? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet you've never run a mail server.
Re:Spam? What's that? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not? You might lose that bet.
I bet you've never run a mail server.
I doubt he has either. My bandwidth logs show that several hundred megabytes of crap hits my network every day, and that's just what is allowed past the firewall. I don't really know how much other stuff is coming at my IP, because it's blocked. The amount of spam is really unbelievable, though, and it's pretty much just a continuous unauthorized consumption of my paid-for resources that does me no good at all. I also get unending attacks on my FTP and other remote services, constant port scans and worm penetration attempts. All that does is clog my pipe, and eats ISPs profit margins.
Besides, torrents and video sharing sites are services that benefit the end user. Regardless of whether people like the GP believe that people are paying their ISPs enough for them, they don't claim vast amounts of bandwidth in order to sell a few thousand bottles of fake Viag!ka and make a few dozen people wealthy. The cost/benefit ratio of bit torrent is quite a bit better than that of spam, I'd say.
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Re:Spam? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Spam? What's that? (Score:4, Interesting)
SPAM is the biggest internet problem and has been for a long time and just keeps getting bigger. Whether you see it or not, I guarantee you, you are paying for it.
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Spam and pork in the USA is a problem, but it is a very different discussion.
Re:Spam? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to add to QuantumRiff's sentiments, calling spam "solved" by spam filters is like calling world wide conflicts "solved" by the arms race. Spam is only a trickle for you because many people spend a lot of time/money (and I mean, a lot) developing and purchasing anti-spam software and hardware. This stuff is under constant development to keep up with the latest techniques used by the spammers. This is similar to how the current state of superpower militaries keeps the peace; large-scale wars of aggression aren't viable at the moment. But this balance of power could shift pretty quickly, for example if someone has a major technological breakthrough that they're able to exploit before anyone else.
Even if we are able to keep up the pace of anti-spam technological improvements indefinitely, it's still a massive waste of resources. The spam problem just shouldn't exist. Sure we do get some dividends in terms of research into natural language parsers and the other techniques being used to automatically classify messages, but most of the people doing this could be doing more productive things with their time.
In the end I think it will only be solved when we solve the botnet problem, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon.
P.S. If you're trying to argue that something is "solved", it's usually a bad idea to also admit that there's only one provider of a viable solution (i.e. pop3/imap spam-free email) in the entire world. That's not a "solution", that's "an invitation to charge us whatever you wish for your service". Also free providers are a bad fit for businesses: using gmail or other free providers for your corporate email address makes your company look a bit cheap; not to mention the privacy issues.
P.P.S. You might find a trickle of spam not to be annoying, but plenty of others do, especially those who are responsible for implementing your so-called solution.
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Well what more do you want? These are the only real solutions. Your analogy isn't perfect because MAD isn't precisely an arms race, but the solutions are similar. You can't force people to submit to some external power that'll enforce peace any more than you can force everyone to switch to $SECURE_OS. I personally prefer a massive waste of resources over the only o
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107% of all SPAM! (Score:2)
The largest "single" source? (Score:2, Insightful)
No longer synonymous, then (Score:2)
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Windows users (Score:2, Informative)
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The tools you're thinking of were standalone removal tools for specific pieces of malware. I'm sure they still release these from time to time. They usually came out for malware that was especially high-profile, so don't expect to see one for every one out there.
But the most useful tools,
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Castration (Score:1)
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Jack Black? (Score:2)
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes clear, once again, that governments are totally not 2.0-ready. They don't know about how technologies work and how to deal with it.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
What surprises me is the benefit of doubt that is always given to those in power. There is much political power to be had by allowing something to become a crisis and then stepping in with "justifiable measures" to address said crisis. This is referred to by various names; the two which come to mind are Problem, Reaction, Solution and the other is Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. The idea comes mainly from Hegel although I suspect it's actually older than this.
Really, don't you ever wonder why most "crises" were foreseeable events that were ignored or neglected until they became huge problems? Personally, I am not so quick to assume they just innocently "don't get it." They might or might not understand the technologies involved, but they certainly do understand what millions of people demanding that they "do something right now" can mean for their political careers.
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So you're saying for politicians it would be more interesting, career wise, to follow the path of Hegel et al and first let something become a problem, wait for a lot of complaints, solve it because a lot of people demand it and then become the "hero".
Still, if I look at some measures like demanding from ISP's to keep record their users's traffic information for 3 yeard, I still have a faint impression they don't know what they're dealing with and how to deal with it.
Remember Y2K? (Score:2)
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No. Not really. What happened then??
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Gambling and the taxation of gambling is a source of income for governments and this is the only interest they have in this matter. Spam, or the lack thereof, is not going to have any impact on the financials of any state, so they couldn't possibly care less.
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They don't know about how technologies work and how to deal with it.
And governments will continue on oblivious until we elect people who do know how technologies work and how to do with them. This election year (now for primaries, and in November for President and other offices) we have the chance to vote with more than just our dollars (as /. is so fond of saying with regard to the MAFIAA). Educate yourself, tell others and make your vote count.
Or else we will just be stuck with the status quo until the "tech generation" grows up and gets themselves into office.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason governments go after vice is because that's what religion wants and the people speak to what religion has brain washed them into demanding because only religion and religious values stand to fight something as unchangeable as human nature.
"Vice" laws need to go away. It should be written into the constitution of every government that morality is not the domain of government so long as it doesn't conflict with the government's obligation to maintain general welfare and common defense. Gambling, drugs and alcohol and prostitution could NEVER threaten general welfare of a population directly. So laws against them can only be the response of legislators who have responded to the demands of the religion industry.
(And before anyone starts responding with disease and violent crimes related to gambling, drugs and alcohol, and prostitution, you'll find that most of these things are caused by their existence as underground and largely illegal activities as demonstrated very well as the prohibition of alcohol created organized violent crime industries that disappeared when prohibition was repealed. Take away the laws against other vices and you will see similar decreases in the diseases and violence surrounding the other vices... they won't go away but they will actually be less of a threat to GENERAL public welfare.)
An end of religious law would allow the focus of law and regulation that actually serves the purpose of government -- to provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare.
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Each of the problems associated with the vices I listed are generally individual weaknesses. These are problems with the individual, not with a society. I might even go as far as to say we're fighting natural laws of selection by preventing addiction prone and otherwise weak people from doing some of these things legally even though some people will do it illegally anyway.
There will always be those individuals and in a way, you've made my point. Has making laws
Re: Priorities (Score:2)
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Probably few to none. It is, unfortunately the lock that both parties have on single-issue-voters that makes progress on many many issues unlikely. If the parties can get all the votes they need on issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration and special rights for various groups, what incentive will they ever have for focusing on the economy as a whole, improving our infrastructure (or getting out of the way so
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Is it time to thank the enablers? (Score:4, Insightful)
People drive their cars every day... there are accidents sometimes. The accidents slow the traffic and pisses everyone off. Sometimes accidents are actually the fault of stupid people. Sometimes the accidents are design problems in the cars. Sometimes the accidents are problems with the roads themselves. But when the accident is cleared and people are going their merry way, we forget the accidents and we certainly never give the causes another thought.
Sometimes people do things to help make the roads safer, but what really works is education and improving levels of awareness. Where driving is concerned, at least where I live, we're at a pretty good balance... not too many accidents and awareness is high enough that it stays that way. Because when it comes to travel on the roads, we know there are no safe roads and there are no safe cars. There are only safe drivers.
I'm trying to draw pictures to draw comparisons. The comparisons should be rather obvious if I haven't been modded -2 Off-topic already. I'm trying to show the motives and the mentality leading to how we got where we are... we have stupid people without awareness or education. We have unsafe computers and unsafe networks. The network needs to be safer, but it can only be "so safe" without removing too much of its usability. The computers need to be safer and certainly CAN be safer... just like cars, the makers need to be sued and regulated until they ARE safer. (Yes, that means Microsoft should be held accountable for their part of the blame!) But computers can only be made "so safe" without removing too much of its usability. After that, the rest of the balance can only be maintained with education and awareness and that's the job of the governing bodies.
We live in a world with a lot of problems and dangers. We teach about a lot of things and think it's rather natural that those things we don't teach and warn people about will naturally lead to problems related to it. We've got a culture and economic system that *VERY* dependent on the public internet and the use of personal computers. We've got heavy dependence on a very weak and exploitable system. I just have to wonder how bad it has to get before the enablers are finally held responsible.
The enablers are the designers of the internet, Microsoft and the governments. The internet is being fixed with IPv6 but not fast enough because the governments are in the pockets of the people who stand to make less profit while the transitions are being made from IPv4 to IPv6. Microsoft is a significant inhibitor (among others) of change and improvement because they are the dominant technology connecting the public internet to the users and to the resources and economy that they all mutually depend on. Government is the only way to make change happen because it is clear that the wisdom and intelligence of the public is low enough that they will always be ineffective. Microsoft and other industry players spend and pay so that they can remain unregulated. They are the enablers of the hell we live with. Let's thank them. Thank the enablers.
It is the government's responsibility to educate the people absolutely and they are failing in that responsibility absolutely. (Note that I don't say it is the government's responsibility to protect the people. Government needs only to provide for common defense and to promote general welfare.) It is also the government's responsibility to regulate things that can cause problems or interference with the general welfare which includes the economy. The public internet, anything dependent on the internet, and the economy are demonstrably threatened by unregulated majority and monopoly players such as Microsoft. They don't want to be regulated, but they need to be regulated as the general welfare is at risk.
A si
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That is perhaps the single most frightening statement I have ever read. Government education has been responsible for some of the biggest crimes in the past couple of centuries. See Germany in the 1930's or the Soviet Union for the first half of the 20th century for examples of this.
However, reading the rest of your post proves that government education is alive and working here in t
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We've got a
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Technology has made it easier to go out and self-educate; it hasn't changed the facts that:
a) you have to be able to discern what is 'correct' information versus 'false' information, even if there is often no actual basis for proving which is which unless you're fairly
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Therein lies your hubris. I'm in your shoes. I know what to look for, I know how to cross reference, I know how to consider the source, etc. What you describe as 'common sense' is a skill, whether you think you learned it or were born with it. Many people don't have
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The unstated assumption you are making is that you are either born with something or you are forever deprived of it. This is a faulty assumption
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Nope. Thats hubris, right there, defined.
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One would argue that one of the many triumphs of modern democracy and western institutions is acknowledging the 'general will' of society.
That is a valid point, but it cannot be understated. The freedom of individuals to decide for ourselves what is most helpful to us to learn in pursuit of our happiness is far more important than any derived benefit of the tendency of collectives to pursue the 'general will.' That is an artifact of collective, institutional recognition of individual rights, and requires no special accommodation to operate, just as the "Invisible Hand" of free economic competition does not require special statutory recogniti
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Those listed above are the real enablers. They are funding the construction of illegal botnets. They are paying for the delivery of massive amounts of illegal spam. These enablers need to be held both financially and criminally accountable for the result.
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Who is regulating whom? (Score:1)
Who cares about the exploiters? (Score:4, Interesting)
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gf not impressed? (Score:1, Funny)
Joe Jobs (Score:1)
dumb idea #2 (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:dumb idea #2.5 (Score:2)
Maybe another company should run an update service for only "critical" situations to push these tools to users without sharing information with Microsoft, assuring
Re:PEBKAC (Score:3, Insightful)
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I read through those tips recently. They are generally good ways to improve security, but most are beyond the average user. Simply having people use non-admin accounts (with something like SudoWin [lostcreations.com] for easy access to admin stuff) or even using DropMyRights [microsoft.com] on IE would probably be 90%+ as effective, and it should be a lot easier than going through all those pages of tips.
My biggest issue with those tips is that most things are way beyond the common user's understanding, and likely to cause issues. When s
Q about the botnet world (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, how many actual botnet masters are there? Is this just the same people but with new malware? Is this malware just version n + 1 of the old malware? Or do the same botnet masters have several botnets?
I sure don't know much about these in this kind of sense.
Re:Q about the botnet world (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that Mega-D is version n+1 of some other malware; this is someone new making their entrance into the underground enterprise. A bot herder has no real incentive to develop an entirely new trojan when their existing bot is still effective. Most modern bots have three primary directives: send spam, propagate, and upgrade/polymorph themselves. If something about Storm, for example, is rendered ineffective by AV or antispam products, it's much easier (and cheaper) for the Storm herder to push out a new release of Storm than it is for him to procure a completely new trojan. The ability to detect and upgrade to new builds is an inherent capability of Storm. Why bother trying to deploy something new when you can upgrade what you already "own?"
It's been shown that Storm's herder can petition off groups of hosts into sub-botnets, presumably to be sold or rented to specific customers. They're still technically part of the Storm botnet, though. Smaller players may have a reason to maintain a series of independent, parallel botnets if they find that their trojans don't deploy well. Surely if you're in the botnet business and you can't reach the "market share" of Storm or Mega-D, it would be to your advantage to experiment and diversify. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the smaller, less successful botnets are actually controlled by a handful of people trying to break into the game.
But I guess all of this is just speculation until we actually catch a few of these assholes and learn firsthand how they operate.
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This is a curious point. A great deal of effort has been put into investigating the Storm network. We're on the eve of the 2nd Super Bowl in a row that Storm will be spamming copies of itself. It's arguably the longest-lasting and most pervasive malware plague we've ever seen. Hundreds of man-hours have been devoted to researching and reporting on its capabilities. Thousands of man-hours hav
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I used to participate in operation of one of these botnets in defense of a couple very popular chat channels. There were often multiple networks connected together among groups who had fri
Spam is the government? (Score:2, Interesting)
The deal was handled by his associate, the convicted crook, who was the mastermind behind the Herbalife spam. It made me think...
Spam is responsible for the largest part of the Internet traffic. It should make the spammers most influential people.
They are rich, they have an access to all private information on our computers, they can bring down an infrastructure of any country, they can pro
What's done is done... (Score:1)