Malware and Botnet Operators Going ISP 131
Trailrunner7 writes to mention that malware and botnet operators appear to be escalating to the next level by setting up their own virtual data centers. This elevates the criminals to the ISP level, making it much harder to stop them. "The criminals will buy servers and place them in a large data center and then submit an application for a large block of IP space. In some cases, the applicants are asked for nothing more than a letter explaining why they need the IP space, security researchers say. No further investigation is done, and once the criminals have the IP space, they've taken a layer of potential problems out of the equation. 'It's gotten completely out of hand. The bad guys are going to some local registries in Europe and getting massive amounts of IP space and then they just go to a hosting provider and set up their own data centers,' said Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, an anti-malware and anti-botnet vendor. 'It takes one more level out of it: You own your own IP space and you're your own ISP at that point.'"
Re:DNA samples/Chips in fingertips? (Score:4, Funny)
Mark Foley would probably like that idea.
Re:Isn't this cool? (Score:3, Funny)
Umm, my future had me flying through a huge chamber freezing other people's limbs with my gun and scoring points with my helmet.
We really should have gone with my future...
Escalation (Score:1, Funny)
"Ha ha! Look at us! We've got fat pipes that we can use to DoS almost anyone and spew spam all over the internet! We so rule! Ha ha!"
(the internet wises up to this; these people get kicked off their ISPs or out of their universities, more people get fat pipes, spam gets blacklisted, damage is mitigated)
"Well, fine. We'll just use security flaws in swiss cheese-like browsers and operating systems, play on people's stupidity regarding computers, and turn everyone into our spam-dumping and DDoS-employing minions! You can't stop us now! Ha ha ha!"
(the internet wises up to this; more secure browsers and operating systems are deployed, better spam filtering is developed, more aggressive security measures pop up, some of which are ISP-level (for better or worse), more people are educated, damage is mitigated)
"Hrmph. No matter. Now we'll go one step higher and just get our own IP blocks and registrars, and then we'll get our own pipes! Then we'll never have ISPs shut us down again! We're so much more clever than you are! Ha ha ha!"
(the internet wises up to this; the IP blocks are soon figured out, all traffic to them is blocked from other ISPs, Google and other search engines refuse to spider anything from those blocks, damage is mitigated)
"Oh... oh yeah? Well, now we'll just go one step higher and use those pipes to make our OWN internet! We'll have everything! It'll all be ours! And YOU won't be able to get into it to stop us! HA HA HA HA!"
(the internet ignores this, that's somebody else's network now)
"...wait, hang on..."
Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Funny)
But they are providing internet service to the critically underserved market of phishers, extortionists and viagra salesman. I bet they even obey network neutrality and don't inject fake RST packets into your connections too. Clearly they qualify as an ISP ;)
youtubers beware (Score:4, Funny)
Re:DNA samples/Chips in fingertips? (Score:3, Funny)
If so, that's going to make it damned hard to be a phlebotomist. It's a good thing I only plan on leaving one.
Re:Easier to block? (Score:2, Funny)
If there were... nobody would bother cleaning old blacklist entries, since the IPs only get recycled every 100 years or so.... no reason to bother.
Then 100 years later, an IP that was spamming 100 years ago gets re-used... and can't connect to anyone......
Re:Easier to block? (Score:3, Funny)
No worries, everyone will be using IPv8 by then.