willay
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I saw this on BBC Breakfast News but I didnt believe it but I've read about it online and its mad.
Basically all these worms/viruses that go round the internet, they can infect your PC and make you part of a botnet, which is basically like an army of computers willing to do anything you tell them to do, like spam people, take down hosts by overloading them with requests.
BBC click (a program about the internetz by bbc) have made a programme showing them taking control of a 22,000 strong botnet, spamming two email addresses (illegal) then taking down a website in a controlled manner (also very illegal)  .
Finally in an act of trying to help the victims who are part of the botnet, they changed their backgrounds to a message telling them that as part of a BBC investigation they were able to take control of their PCs, also telling them how to fix their PC's by using firewalls/anti virus.
this isnt the first time this sort of thing has happened, there are groups of people on the Internet who are dedicated to finding these botnets and deactivating them (without 'testing' them btw ) but this is the first high profile case.
Have a look if you're remotely interested in this thing, its funny to think all these people running Wnidows complaining about slow performance could all be done to the fact their PC is being used for an attack.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7932816.stm
[Edited on 12-03-2009 by willay]
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Cosmo
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I bet its because they spoke to someone they didnt know on MSN and told them their pets name.
It is mad to think BBC did this, certainly could of got them in a bit of trouble if true.
Also, on an unrelated note, that PinOptic thing was on BBC Click the other week!
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willay
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could of? its video evidence that they broke the computer misuse act FFS - thats something you can go to JAIL FOR!
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John
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So they've went on IRC and bought a selection of 'bots'.
Wonder if we'd get away with that if we said it was to document on here.
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willay
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i havent watched it yet but on the reg they said they bought it from a forum, and the price is roughly £300 for a 1,000 botnet.
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Cosmo
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quote:
Originally posted by willay
could of? its video evidence that they broke the computer misuse act FFS - thats something you can go to JAIL FOR!
I more more referring to IF they did it, not that what they did may or may not of been legal!
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John
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It's not a very good video when you do watch it willay, doesn't explain much.
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Rob_Quads
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The only reason they would not get done for it is due to the whole "journalistic license" the fact is they can get away with bending the rules i.e. impersinating people etc when other people would get done but because it was in the interests of journalism they don't get done.
here I guess it may be similar. What they did is illegal plain and simple - they will probably get away with it tho. The fact they say there is no intent in what they did makes no difference.
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xa0s
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I used to be well into the 'underground' scene. A fair few years ago, I made my own botnet but at the time I didn't know they were called botnets or people didn't call them that.
Funny this should be posted actually. I've just downloaded VB for the first time in years today as I needed to make a program vote over and over again on this poll, but back when I was a little greb on computers I used to use it to create the programs that 'formed' the botnets.
You'd be surprised, but back in the old days there wasn't many MSN viruses going around. You'd see a few but no-where near like they are today. Windows 98 used to be very un-secure and I could attach viruses into JPG's which executed exactly like an EXE would do. No virus scanner would pick it up (and back then everyone had Norton anyway).
It was very simple, but very effective -- I'd send the JPG to someone on my list and they'd open it. Instantly they become under my control and the program was silent. I made the program open a JPG for real in Internet Explorer (what 98 used to view JPG's) so they weren't alerted. Whilst they were looking at the JPG, they had already silently sent the JPG tp everyone on their list as 'me.jpg' and within an hour I had over 5,000 computers ready to whatever I wanted.
At the time, I just used it for overloading websites and voting in polls. I used to run a hacking website and it was entered into tons of top 50 hacking website lists, and I just made my 'botnet' vote for me so I instantly went miles ahead of everyone else, and if anyone questioned what I was doing their website would be taken down instantly lol...
It's funny looking back on it as I was only like 13 or something at the time, and I had no idea how serious what I was doing actually was. I imagine it's a LOT harder to form a botnet today with all the different OS's, virus scanners and so on.
Unfortunately (well, maybe fortunately) mine died through a stupid mistake. I made all my comments go through my web server I had running and I accidently let the domain expire. I had formed a massive botnet with something like 45,000 computers infected and foolishly let it die through stupidity.
I can't believe the BBC done that, though! I suppose it's a lot easier as people trust BBC and just do it without thinking.
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John
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I don't believe any of that.
You had sub7 and sent it to some people on icq with a jpg icon.
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xa0s
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Heh, that too. Classic memories.
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Doug
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Ahhhh sub7. So many good times
That was as far as my hacking ever got back then
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ssj_kakarot
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lol i used to love sub7, atach it to a desktop game and every ones a victim.
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Paul_J
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quote:
Originally posted by John
I don't believe any of that.
You had sub7 and sent it to some people on icq with a jpg icon.
haha yeh that was what i was thinking
script kiddie.
I think everyone had sub 7 - but back then it just felt like 'pranking' your mate, rather than anything serious
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xa0s
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Yep, I make stories up randomly to sound cool.
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willay
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lol@ you lot calling people script kiddies, I'd be suprised if most of you had any more skill then a script kiddy in the first place.
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willay
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quote:
Originally posted by xa0s
I imagine it's a LOT harder to form a botnet today with all the different OS's, virus scanners and so on.
Alot easier, most hit windows which has had some classic vulns which affected xp,vista,2000 etc in one hit. Most people that create these sort of things run their binaries against available scanners and adjust them accordingly 
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Ojc
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This thread has just overloaded my daily input of geek.
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gavin18787
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quote:
Originally posted by Ojc
This thread has just overloaded my daily input of geek.
+1
That click program is sometimes quite good though. Thought it was a bit random when I saw it on breakfast too
Drives supercharged Tec with torque  
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Hammer
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They should do more stuff like that. Shove your acts and laws up your backside, it's entertaining and informative.
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Paul_J
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quote:
Originally posted by willay
lol@ you lot calling people script kiddies, I'd be suprised if most of you had any more skill then a script kiddy in the first place.
I can't speak for John or Doug, but I don't think any of us were trying to claim to be anything more than 'script kiddies'? 
It was only Xaos, who was telling us stories about how he almost took over the world with his botnet until he let his domain expire
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willay
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script kiddie is normally a term used by people who have a clue and want to belittle users below them who haven't got a clue what they are doing. thats all.
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xa0s
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quote:
Originally posted by Paul_J
It was only Xaos, who was telling us stories about how he almost took over the world with his botnet until he let his domain expire
Exaggeration, much? It really ain't that many computers when you think about it.
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John
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It's nothing to do with the amount of computers, it's just the fact that none of us believe you.
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xa0s
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You must be awfully shit with computers then, as I done it when I was 12-14...
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