Backdoor bot brains snatched after cops, white hats raid servers

Microsoft and Interpol have teamed up to derail a malware infection that compromised more than 770,000 Windows PCs worldwide. Simda is a “pay-per-install” software nasty: fraudsters pay miscreants some sum of money for every 1,000 or so machines they compromise. The hackers effectively earn cash by selling access to the …

[All names Taken]

Oi

Does this mean that t'internet is not secure?

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Oi

No, it means some types of endpoints are not secure.

[frank ly]

Don't/Can't people notice these infections?

If infected, don't people notice sluggishness when doing ordinary things on their computer and is there an unusual amount of data transfer in/out of the intertube?

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Re: Don't/Can't people notice these infections?

Malware like this doesn't use all that much processor power and RAM. Combine that with the fact that the vast majority of machines are shipping with Quad-core chips and 4 GB of RAM and are being connected to fairly decent pipes, this kind of thing can go a long time without being detected. Even if it did, most people would just blame performance issues on the machine being old or the internet being slow that day. You might have noticed performance degradation from a piece of malware years back when every processor cycle counted, now applications run so heavily that malware can hide in the variances of resource usage.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Don't/Can't people notice these infections?

Did you run CCCleaner and reboot the machine?

[Crazy Operations Guy]

"kills off antivirus software"

I shudder at the thought that one day Malware like this would take the smart route and add itself to the Anti-virus's white-list rather than disabling it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those responsible...

...should be shot dead. That way they'll never create such scumware again - guaranteed.

[David Roberts]

Re: Those responsible...

Yeah yeah yeah.

And those who jump traffic light, cycle on the pavements, play loud music....

.......perhaps we should sort out the death penalty for trivial things like rape and murder first, making sure that all convictions are safe of course.

Retard.

[Pez92]

Re: Those responsible...

Harsh penalties for cyber crimes is risky because you never really know for sure who the real mastermind is. By definition, the hackers are always 1 step ahead, because if they weren't their attacks would fail. Considering they have these tools at their disposal, along with being lightyears ahead of law enforcement in terms of tech knowledge, cybercriminals are the most probable and capable of framing unknowing botnet slaves of their crimes by rerouting traffic and purposefully leading breadcrumbs leading back to their victim. The recent Ulbricht case has shown that you get absolutely no reasonable doubt from the argument of getting framed, so now more than ever hackers will see the merit of such a contingency.