One Bot herder facing 60 years is a small dent in the overall problem!

(Screen shot of botnets for rent courtesy of the Mind Streams of Information Security Knowledge blog)

While John Schiefer a.k.a. "acid and "acidstorm," is facing 60 years in prison and $1.75 million in fines for operating a botnet, the problem isn't likely to disappear anytime soon.

Schiefer was part of a hacker group known as Defonic, who gained a lot of notoriety for hacking Paris Hilton's cell phone and breaking into Lexis Nexis. Lexis Nexis is an information broker used by a lot of investigative and collection types to find people they are looking for.

Besides Paris, Defonic seemed to have a penchant for celebrity information, a lot of which they gathered by hacking Lexis Nexis, according to Brian Krebbs of the Washington Post.

While I knew this already, I ran into a very interesting blog written by Dancho Danchev that illustrates the problem that botnets have become, worldwide.

In his own words, Dancho describes how botnets can be bought, or rented fairly cheaply by spammers, phishermen and corporate spies, alike:

What about the prices? Differentiated pricing on a per country is an interesting pricing approach, for instance, 1000 infected hosts in Germany are available for $220, and 1000 infected hosts in the U.S go for half the price $110. It doesn't really feel very comfortable knowing someone's bargaining with your bandwidth and clean IP reputation, does it? What's worth discussing is the fact that the service isn't marketed as a DIY DDoS service, but as a simple acccess to a botnet one, where the possibilities for abuse are well known to everyone reading here. Spamming and phishing mailings, hosting and distribution of malware using the rented infrastructure, OSINT through botnets, corporate espionage through botnets, pretty much all the ugly practices you can think of.

The bottom line is that although Mr. Schiefer and some of his friends have been taken down, there are a lot of hackers ready to fill the small void he may have left in the botnet market.

Very INTERESTING read from Dancho on his blog, "Mind Streams of Information Security Knowledge," here.

A lot was written about John Schiefer when he pled guilty. Brian Krebs of the Washington Post deserves a "hat-tip" for giving everyone a lot of insight about Mr. Schiefer's previous dealings.

The post, he wrote about this in his blog, Security Fix can be read, here.

The best way to avoid having your computer becoming a zombie (botnet member) is to avoid clicking on any links in a spam e-mail, or downloading additional software that is presented to you after visiting a questionable website.

Most of the time, social engineering lures (trickery) is used to get a human being to put malicious software on their system.

Of course, trying to make sure your system is bulletproof (protected by reputable security software) is recommended, also.

Botnet owner faces 60 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine

Until recently, botnet owners seemed to be able to trash people's systems without having to face very many consequences. And in a lot of instances, more than a system gets trashed when it is compromised by a botnet owner.

Friday, the Central California U.S. Attorney's office announced the prosecution of one of these botnet owners. Of interest, the botnet owner, John Schiefer admitted to compromising up to 250,000 computers with malware (malicious software).

In the first prosecution of its kind in the nation, a well-known member of the “botnet underground” was charged today with using “botnets” – armies of compromised computers – to steal the identities of victims across the country by extracting information from their personal computers and wiretapping their communications.

The criminal information and plea agreement filed this morning in United States District Court in Los Angeles outline a series of schemes in which Schiefer and several associates developed malicious computer code and distributed that code to vulnerable computers. Schiefer and the others used the illicitly installed code to assemble armies of up to 250,000 infected computers, which they used to engage in a variety of identity theft schemes. Schiefer also used the compromised computers to defraud a Dutch advertising company.

According to the press release, Schiefer and crew seemed to prefer harvesting eBay and PayPal information:

In his plea agreement, Schiefer acknowledged installing malicious computer code, or “malware,” that acted as a wiretap on compromised computers. Because the users of those compromised computers were unaware that their computers had been turned into “zombies,” they continued to use their computers to engage in commercial activities. Schiefer used the malware, which he called a “spybot,” to intercept electronic communications being sent over the Internet from those zombie computers to www.paypal.com and other websites. Once in possession of those intercepted communications, Schiefer and the others sifted through the data to mine usernames and passwords. With Paypal usernames and passwords, Schiefer and the others accessed bank accounts to make purchases without the consent of the true owners. Schiefer also acknowledged in the plea agreement that he transferred both the wiretapped communications and the stolen Paypal information to others. It is the first time in the nation that someone has been charged under the federal wiretap statute for conduct related to botnets.

It appears that the FBI's Cyber Division might have had something to do with catching Mr. Schiefer and crew.

In June, they announced a nationwide initiative against botnet owners called Operation Bot Roast.

Mr. Schiefer isn't mentioned in the release about Operation Bot Roast, but it appears that the FBI is starting to take this activity seriously and is making it more dangerous for botner owners to operate.

When Schiefer pleads guilty to all of this on November 28th, he will face a statutory maximum sentence of 60 years in federal prison and a fine of $1.75 million.

Full press release from the United States Attorney's Office Central District of California, here.

If you have been a victim of a botnet owner, who turned your computer into a zombie you can assist the FBI by reporting the matter at the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

They also have some information on how to avoid having your computer turned into a zombie, here.

FBI roasts a few Bot-Herders, which will free up to a million Zombies

Sick and tired of all the spam filling up your inbox, despite filtering technology that doesn't seem to work very well? If you are, Operation Bot Roast is a story that might catch your interest, or if you are like me, is chicken soup for the soul.

Botnets are a primary cause for the ever increasing levels of spam. Botnets are infected computers that their masters (bot-herders) turn into zombies, spewing out spam e-mails by the millions.

These bot-herders cause a lot of us, a whole lot of grief.

The FBI press release announced yesterday:

They’re called “bot-herders:” hackers who install malicious software on computers through the Internet without the owners’ knowledge. Once the software is loaded, they can control the computer remotely. And once they’ve compromised enough computers, they have a robot network or botnet.

Some botnets are huge: tens of thousands of infected computers. Or more. As a result of Operation Bot Roast, an ongoing and coordinated initiative to disrupt and dismantle these bot-herders, we’ve identified about 1 million computers across the country that have been compromised.

According to the press release, several people have been arrested, including three of the big-time "masters."

Full story from the FBI, here.

Also contained are a lot of useful links on protect yourself -- and of course your computer -- and what to do if you think your computer was turned into a zombie.

Bot-herders have been reported to rent out their illicit networks to organized criminals by the hour.



What your computer must feel like after being turned into a zombie (Courtesy of Wikipedia).

Just what Dad doesn't need for Father's Day - a Hallmark card with a Trojan hidden inside

This isn't the first time that malicious software is being sent disguised as an e-card, but when something works, scammers often use it, time and time, again.

Mary Landesman of About.com is warning all of us:

The latest greeting card scam is once again targeting Hallmark. The bogus email claims "you have recieved a Hallmark E-Card!" The first tip-off for the security conscious should be the misspelled 'recieved' - it's I before E except after C (or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh). One would assume the prose experts at Hallmark would know their receive from their recieve - which, of course, they would. In any event, the message doesn't even read like a real Hallmark notice, which always identifies the sender by name and gives you an alternate link URL that you can copy and paste in lieu of blindly clicking a link. Why is this important? Because a real Hallmark URL doesn't point to an IP address followed by 'postcard.exe' - which the malicious link does.

Here is information on the particular trojan being delivered in these e-cards, but this could change tomorrow, or might have already. There is a lot of malicious software out there.

And just what does this latest greeting card scam deliver? Like most others, it dishes up a variant of the Zapchast Trojan. Zapchast installs an Internet Relay (IRC) chat client and causes the infected computer to connect to an IRC channel. Attackers then use that connection to remotely command the machine. And you thought forgetting your birthday was bad.

Sounds like another method of turning a computer into a zombie, which is normally used to help spread more spam. Spam is a vehicle for most Internet scams, or at the very least, questionable products.

Spam is reaching epidemic proportions, and seems to be getting past a lot of spam filters, recently. A good place to learn about, or fight spam is spam.abuse.net.

About.com story, here.

While a nation mourns, cyber criminals are on the attack

Earlier in the week, I blogged about how cyber criminals (ghouls) would likely use the Virginia Tech disaster to line their pockets.

According to Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service, this prediction is becoming true -- and according to experts -- fake domains are being set up at a faster rate than after the Katrina hurricane.

Even malicious software a.k.a (crimeware) is being circulated via spam e-mails, claiming to have a link to cam phone footage of the incident.

Clicking on this filth can turn your computer into a zombie (normally used in a botnet to send more spam) -- or even log your personal and financial details -- which might be later sold in a carder forum (used for identity theft).

Very interesting and sad commentary on how cyber criminals are on the attack, while a lot of people are in mourning, here.

One place, I recommend to send any of this (trash) you spot on this is to Castlecop's:

Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination Squad (PIRT)

They make sure this garbage gets reported to all the appropriate parties!

Fake e-mail claiming U.S. has attacked Iran contains Trojan

If you receive a e-mail that Iran has been toasted by a U.S. strike, be careful of clicking on the attachment. Doing so, might toast your computer system.

John McDonald posted this information on the Symantec blog:

Over the weekend Security Response received samples of the latest variants of Trojan.Peacomm and W32.Mixor doing the rounds. The social engineering trick employed this time is in appealing to people's sense of fear as well as natural curiosity of a possible Middle East war involving the United States, Iran and Israel.

Subjects include "USA Just Have Started World War III" / "Missle Strike: The USA kills more then 20000 Iranian citizens" / "Israel Just Have Started World War III" / "USA Missile Strike: Iran War just have started". From the sample emails that we have seen to date, the actual email body is blank, and the attached files have various names such as "video.exe", "movie.exe", "click here.exe", "clickme.exe", "readme.exe" and "read more.exe".

More on this on the Symantec blog, here.

An unprotected computer might be turned into a zombie, which becomes part of a botnet (used to harass the rest of us with lots of more spam) if one of these attachments is clicked on.

Spam is often used to facilitate financial crimes, such as identity theft.

It pays be to EXTREMELY careful before clicking on any (unknown) attachments received via e-mail.

Valentine's Day Virus moving quickly across the Internet

Sophos is reporting a nasty virus, which if downloaded, sends more e-mail to everyone in your address book.

They suspect that the worm opens a gateway, which will allow your computer to be turned into a zombie and be used to send more spam e-mails.

Here is a portion of the alert from Sophos:

Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned of a widespread worm posing as a St Valentine's Day greeting which is spreading fast across the internet

The W32/Dref-AB worm has been deliberately spread via email in readiness for office workers and home computer users to find the malicious Valentine email in their inbox first thing in the morning. Since midnight GMT the Dref-AB worm has accounted for 76.4% of all malware sighted at Sophos's global network of virus monitoring stations.

Subject lines used in the attack are many and varied, but all pose as a romantic message. Some of them include "A Valentine Love Song", "Be My Valentine", "Fly Away Valentine", "For My Valentine", "Happy Valentine's Day", "My Lucky Valentine", "My Valentine", "My Valentine Heart", "My Valentine Sunshine", "Send Love On Valentines", "The Valentine Love Bug", "The Valentines Angel", "Valentine's Love", "Valentine's Night", "Valentine Letter", "Valentine Love Song", "Valentine Sweetie", "Valentines Day Dance", "Valentines Day is here again", and "Your Love on Valentine's".

Sophos alert, here.

Spam is getting out of control and seems to be defeating spam filters (too often). Here is more evidence of this problem:

2006 was the Year of Internet Crime - 2007 is predicted to be even worse