

Koobface Gang Uses Facebook to Spread Powerful Worm - freejoe76
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/technology/koobface-gang-uses-facebook-to-spread-powerful-worm.html

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Vivtek
_The Koobface gang’s freedom underscores how hard it is to apprehend
international computer criminals_

Oh, yes - the problem is the _international criminals_ who run botnets, not
the poor hapless American ISPs who somehow just can't do anything about
identified botnet hosts.

If only there were some way for the American government to be given tools to
protect defenseless Americans from evildoers abroad!

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feralchimp
"Efforts to contact members of the group for comment have been unsuccessful."

Okay okay, but what _would_ they have said?

'Our efforts to pwn n00bs / go shopping / pay off local cops have been GREAT
SUCCESS!'

'At least we're not Paypal.'

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Zarathust
No need for SOPA to combat this kind of cybercrime. DNS takedown may slow
these guys down but it would not stop anything.

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pilom
SOPA doesn't fight cybercrime! It attempted to allow US authorities to block
access to people who provided counterfeit or unlicensed copywritten work.
That's all.

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jaylevitt
The pharma counterfeiters ARE the botnet herders ARE the credit card rings.
And counterfeit drugs would have fallen under SOPA.

SOPA was a horrible idea, of course. But yes, any anti-counterfeiting laws can
also be cybercrime laws.

~~~
teyc
Companies like Microsoft have worked with ISPs to take down botnet command and
control. All this without needing new regulations.

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sunchild
I love that they use Macs to _make_ malware.

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zalew
_The group cleverly harnessed the infrastructures of powerful online services
— from Facebook and Twitter to Google’s search engine and Blogger — to do the
heavy lifting, and may have run its enterprise with just a few computers._

Some time ago there was a curious thread on Reddit, about multiple accounts
and subreddits with thousands of posts looking like hash strings, somebody
suggested those were encrypted instructions for botnets.

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verroq
It doesn't take much to write the next "fake spyware scanner 2012", just
tedious.

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ranit8
Relevant links:

[http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2012/01/whos-behind-koobface-
bo...](http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2012/01/whos-behind-koobface-botnet-
osint.html)

<http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/koobface/>

