Hunt for Russia's web criminals | Technology | The Guardian
November 23, 2007
Hunt for Russia's web criminals | Technology | The Guardian: "Rise of the botnets
Botnet evolution is intrinsically linked to Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The first bots were developed from a messaging facility within IRC with a view to controlling PCs remotely.
Late 1999 SANS Institute researchers find remotely executable code on thousands of Windows machines. The infected computers are named "robots", shortened to "bot".
February 2000 Bot programs are encrypted, so their purpose only becomes clear when they are used to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, bringing down sites such as Amazon and eBay.
October 22 2002 Nine of the internet's 13 "root DNS" servers are disabled in a massive attack by a bot herder advertising his services.
2002-04 Bots get more sophisticated and begin to handle tasks such as sending spam, hosting phishing sites, and other illegal activity.
2005 Code-changing techniques are developed to hide bots from security products. Professionals design, program, and support bot "packages" for criminals
2006 Peer-to-peer communication protocols pass command of the botnet between compromised PCs to evade bot hunters. Automated retaliatory attacks start on anything trying to find or interfere with a botnet.
February 6 2007 Second attack on internet's root DNS servers.
May 18 2007 Two-week attack on Estonia's computers takes the country offline following its government's moving of a statue of a Russian second world war soldier."
Source: guardian
Botnet evolution is intrinsically linked to Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The first bots were developed from a messaging facility within IRC with a view to controlling PCs remotely.
Late 1999 SANS Institute researchers find remotely executable code on thousands of Windows machines. The infected computers are named "robots", shortened to "bot".
February 2000 Bot programs are encrypted, so their purpose only becomes clear when they are used to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, bringing down sites such as Amazon and eBay.
October 22 2002 Nine of the internet's 13 "root DNS" servers are disabled in a massive attack by a bot herder advertising his services.
2002-04 Bots get more sophisticated and begin to handle tasks such as sending spam, hosting phishing sites, and other illegal activity.
2005 Code-changing techniques are developed to hide bots from security products. Professionals design, program, and support bot "packages" for criminals
2006 Peer-to-peer communication protocols pass command of the botnet between compromised PCs to evade bot hunters. Automated retaliatory attacks start on anything trying to find or interfere with a botnet.
February 6 2007 Second attack on internet's root DNS servers.
May 18 2007 Two-week attack on Estonia's computers takes the country offline following its government's moving of a statue of a Russian second world war soldier."
Source: guardian