Zombies flood broadband networks

Zombie compromised PCs are as fond of eating bandwidth as their counterparts are of munching through brains, according to a new study. Arbor Networks' third annual worldwide infrastructure security report found that, for the first time, botnets surpassed distributed denial of service attacks as the top operational threat …

[Alan Donaly]

honeynet

http://www.cyber-ta.org/releases/malware-analysis/public/ has some interesting stats about botnets isc.sans has a handler diary about it. What I came away with is a renewed distrust of cable broadband ISPs.It means nothing in the UK but here in the US Roadrunner is the only ISP I know of that has on more than one occasion featured drive by downloads on it's startup page. I know I said I would never again comment here but I had a relapse I am weak.

[Geoff Johnson]

Noisy Adverts.

Come on Reg. lets not stoop to that level. I usually tollerate your ads for your benefit but this is going too far.

One more ad with sound and I'll start blocking them.

[Silvergunner]

Call Leon S. Kennedy

Unsurprising Zombie PCs are the main problem now. With the latest security flaws in Vista, its easier than ever to compromise a PC.

[Ian]

maybe ISPs should be looking to this than kicking p2p users

You'd think it would make sense eh?

but naw, p2p users are easier targets than grannies with a bot infested winblows.

[Rob]

@Noisy Adverts

Is your ad-block broken? -maybe try rebooting your windows..

[Nick Ryan]

@ @Noisy Adverts

Alternatively just edit your hosts file and point the most common ad servers to nowhere, or just localhost :)

Works a treat and saves wasting money on paid-for ad-blockers (daft), free ones that attempt to own your entire system (browser toolbars - especially from search engines) or the utterly ineffective ones that come with IE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Noisy Zombie Adverts

Noisy ads = Firefox + Adblock but don't tell that freaky web designer (wankor) cos he might try and have me assasinated

Its funny how the people who could do something about botnets on a mass scale don't appear to be that interested in doing anything, seems they just want to sign more and more customers up...

bah so what if our infrastrucutre is being used for devious tasks, as long as the unaware lusers are paying the monthly subs...

but then the argument arises who is responsible right the ISPs can't keep users PC's patched up to date... so why does'nt someone develop a stripepd down water tight can't spam / DoS / retardo version of an OS and make billions selling it to the masses of fearful internet / computer users who live in fear of a Nigerian knocking on the door and asking for they're internet banking details, yet have little or no knowledge of how to guard themselves against it... and don't realise that they have just infact blurted out they're details....

[A J Stiles]

Advert-blocking: the next level

I'm seriously surprised that none of the broadband resellers have started offering "ad-free" surfing (at a premium, naturally). Sky Plus users already pay extra for what amounts to ad-free telly, so there's probably a market.

This would be totally hardware- and software-neutral; since no matter what browser you were using, you just simply wouldn't ever get the adverts sent to you -- just a 403 error from the proxy server.

Of course, any ISP with the brains and the balls to offer a service like that would also be more than able to contain subscribers who become "zombiefied" -- and to refuse to deliver any mail originating from a machine which is not registered as an MX for the domain from which it purports to originate.

[John]

The blame lies with Microsoft

When I was on telewest broadband in Bristol, I was attacked about 30 times an hour from zombie pc's trying to infect me. The internet is crawling with them.

The drain on bandwidth from all the spam and DoS attacks is seriously reducing the bandwidth left for regular internet use by you and I. The blame lies squarely with Microsoft for selling (forcing upon us) OS's which are so easy to enslave my grandmother could do it.

The ISP's should group together and sue Microsoft for releasing OS's in which a major "feature" is slavery and the consumption of x% of bandwidth. How much money has been spent on high bandwidth cables, surely the investors are entitled to some of their money back.