Mergers and acquisitions in the botnet world

Mergers and acquisitions in the botnet world

• By William Jackson
• May 11, 2009

With the growth of the profit motive in recent years, the world of hackers has become more businesslike, with the development of off-the-shelf software packages, professional services, and retail and wholesale markets for goods and resources. Will we be seeing the emergence of mergers and acquisitions?

Probably not yet. Bot-herders still appear to be more interested in hostile takeovers than mergers. But some observers are concerned about the apparent strategic partnership being established by two of the more successful current botnets: Conficker and Waledac.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) warned last month that a new variant of the Conficker worm, also known as W32.Downadup, that updated earlier infections via its peer-to-peer network. The most recent variant appears to download additional malicious code onto compromised systems, including copies of the Waledac Trojan, a spam tool. Waledac has previously spread via e-mail containing malicious links.

“While self-updating botnets are nothing new, what was unusual was this update was coming from a Waledac domain, another major botnet,” MX Logic said in its recent threat report for April. “This level of cooperation between two major botnets is interesting since rival botnets typically try to eradicate one another in an effort to establish supremacy. This indicates that two of the world’s largest botnets may be working together to create the first ‘mega-botnet’ made up of tens or hundreds of millions of PCs.”

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So conflicker and waledac bot herders were able to find each other and connect.

They were able to come to some financial agreement and exchange codes.

And establish enough trust to creat this business deal.

How were they able to find each other? and establsh conclusive ID's.

Communicate, and exchange funds?

The old axiom "Folow the money" should lead to the bot hearders.

If they can meet up and communicate; they can be traced and tracked.

This will make a great book when they are caught.

Gerald

Tactical Internet Systems analyst.

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