command and control

Red alert - automated SHIELDS Up - malware becomes smarter!

If you haven’t recently kept up to date on the malware front, a recent article at DarkReading may come as a surprise to you. ALERT: Malware has become intelligent!

Rare Malware A Hint Of Threats To Come shows that malware has come a long way and has gained some significant intelligence to avoid detection. The article mentions that some attacks are more directed than broad. These attacks go at specific organizations and even specific data at those organizations. Once the data is collected, the malware can clean up after itself and disappear.

Other “intelligent” behavior seen by researchers includes command and control systems that can determine if a device is actually an owned bot or a researcher imitating a bot. In these types of cases, the command and control system can actually blacklist the researcher’s network range so it cannot intrude on the malware environment.

Quite intriguing stuff and this is what is really happening today! You should be familiar with this stuff if you manage a computer network and are responsible for security. Remember in secURITy - U R IT (you are IT).

Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens!

Can a botnet make me sexy?

Ponder this question. Are there botnets that are sexy and make you more attractive? I got this idea from the Animal Planet (Discovery) show: Monsters Inside Me: Can a Parasite Make Me Sexy? Consider a good botnet (parasite) for a minute. Is something like the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator or Microsoft’s Systems Center Configuration Manager something like a command and control system for a good botnet? Would that be considered a sexy parasite? Is this just a symbiotic relationship that is good for all?

So, think about it… what are you infected with today that’s doing you good?

Well… maybe it’s not always good to be infected with a parasite so that’s why I say: thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.