Malware Resists Eradication

Infected PCs are being linked to networks by Criminals--using different pieces of destructive malware that thwart security applications

Millions of PCs strong That's A Botnetweb

Find more evidence of botnetwebs that came from Finjan, a network security equipment company in California. Finjan reported finding a C&C server capable of sending spam, malware, or remote-control commands to a whopping 1.9 million bots.

The C&C server had six administrator accounts, plus a cache of dirty programs. Ophir Shalitin, Finjan marketing director, says Finjan doesn't know which of the programs might have infected which of the PCs--or more important, which malware made the initial infection. The firm traced the (now defunct) C&C server's IP address to Ukraine, and found evidence that the botnet resources were rented out for $100 per 1000 bots per day.

According to Alex Lanstein, a FireEye senior security researcher, a distributed collection of botnets gives bad guys many advantages. If law enforcement or a security firm were to shut down the C&C server for any single botnet, the crook could still make a profit from the surviving botnets.

Creating such botnets typically starts with "dropper" malware, Lanstein says, that uses "plain-Jane, vanilla techniques" and no strange coding or actions that may raise a red flag for antivirus apps. Once a dropper enters a PC (often via a drive-by download or an e-mail attachment), it may pull in a Trojan horse, such as the Hexzone malware being sent by the server Finjan found. That Hexzone variant was initially detected by only 4 out of 39 antivirus engines at Virus total.

How do you make a terrible thing even worse? If you're a crook who operates a botnet--an often-expansive network of malware-infected PCs--you link botnets together to form a gargantuan "botnetweb." And you do it in a way that's hard for an antivirus suite to fight.

Botnetwebs don't just enable crooks to send spam or malware to millions of PCs at once. They also represent a highly resilient infection that uses multiple files. An attempt at disinfection might eliminate some files, but those left behind will often redownload the scrubbed ones.

The culprits "are not a bunch of nerds sitting in some dark room developing these botnets for fun," writes Atif Mushtaq of FireEye, the Milpitas, California, security company that coined the term botnetweb. "These are organized people running this in the form of a sophisticated business."

Rosemarie Grabowski
Identity Protection and PC Securtiy
308 687 6085
http://www.amisafeidentityftheft.blogspot.com

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