Stage one - infect as many end users with high speed Internet access as possible through the use of client side vulnerabilities. Stage two - ensure the longest possible lifecycle for the malware campaign by having the newly released binaries hosted at the infected PCs themselves. Stage three - take advantage of fast-flux networks to make it harder to shut down the entire botnet. And stage four - strike back at any security researcher or vendor playing around with Storm Worm's fast-flux network or somehow messing up with the malicious economies of scale on a worldwide basis. On Friday I received an email from Susan Williams at aa419.org, and as it looks like several other anti-fraud sites are getting DDoS-ed too :"On September 2 2007, online scammers began an automated DDoS attack against aa419.org, with the goal of shutting down the anti-fraud site. For some time, aa419 was able to filter the worldwide botnet's attacks by monitoring connections and only allowing legitimate visitors to access thesite. However, by September 5 the hoster was being overwhelmed with nearly 400 GB of incoming requests every hour. Rather than let their infrastructure melt under the onslaught, the server is currently offline. This massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was inspired by aa419.org's mission to blacklist and shut down scam web sites. Since 2004, the all-volunteer organization has recorded more than 18,000 such sites. In addition to publicly warning potential victims of fraud, they work with hosters and registrars to take scam web sites offline quickly, with a success rate of over 97% shut down. Susan Williams, press officer for aa419.org, said, "On the whole, we're positive about this. Not that we enjoy being offline; quite the opposite. But being attacked with a botnet of this magnitude tells us that we are doing serious damage to the organized crime networks that run these scams." Internet crime is increasing at record rates, and aa419.org is at the forefront of the fight against it. "We will continue our work regardless of how many criminals are annoyed by it," Williams said."
Castlecops comments on the DDoS taking place at the site too :
"This newest ddos round started about a week ago and knocked us offline for a couple hours while we figured out what was going on. And we're still under attack, so if the site is a bit slower, you know why. Odd month really, lots of sites, lots of sites, are under ddos. We've got over 10k bots attacking us with more being added daily."
As a friend recently pointed out - you ain't making a difference until you start getting DDoS-ed.
Cartoon courtesy of Joyoftech.com, here're more courtesy of myself.
Related posts:
The War against botnets and DDoS attacks
Emerging DDoS Attack Trends
DDoS On Demand vs DDoS Extortion
