DOJ Gets Court Permission To Attack Botnet 84
itwbennett writes "In an unprecedented move, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have been issued a temporary restraining order that will allow the FBI and the US Marshal for the District of Connecticut to set up servers at the Internet Systems Consortium or other ISPs that would stop infected computers from continuing to spread the Coreflood virus, according to court records. This week, the DOJ and FBI seized five servers that controlled Coreflood-infected computers, the DOJ said in a press release. The agencies also seized 29 domain names used by the Coreflood botnet to communicate with the servers."
Seizing Domain names (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a total waste of time.
Half the ones they seize are innocent bystanders. The rest are replaced for $16 bucks at some sleezey registrar. Probably most are simply
decoys and the ones of real importance are out of country.
Perhaps the Defense contractor whined, and that finally got the Fed's attention, but it seems to me that various private initiatives (like those by Microsoft and others) have been way out ahead of this.
Why not audit that Defense Contractor's IT procedures and practices. A bot net owning one of their boxes? Seriously?
Re:Governet (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG, the gub'ment is taking down botnet servers illegally controlling millions of PCs!
Seriously, I'm all for hating on government control, but is what they're doing in this instance so egregious?
Re:Governet (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Governet (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes in a way we CAN blame it on the government, because it ultimately comes down to "can you baby proof the world?". Because as someone who cleans these things for a living I can tell you a good 90% of infections are from users being dumbasses and NOTHING else.
Frankly, so what? The question isn't "whose fault is it", the question is "how do we stop it". If you answer is "stop people from being stupid", then you obviously don't live in the real world.
It's equally valid to say that 90% of people who fall for pyramid schemes or various other types of fraud are also being stupid. We still do our best to stop fraudsters from victimizing people, or punish them when they do. Whether you like it or not, we as a society have decided that pursuing criminals is a worthwhile endeavor. If you can't live with that, I hear Somalia is much more lax about such things ...