Four Years Jail For Bredolab Botnet Author 47
angry tapir writes "The creator of the Bredolab malware has received a four-year prison sentence in Armenia for using his botnet to launch DDoS attacks that damaged multiple computer systems owned by private individuals and organizations. G. Avanesov was sentenced by the Court of First Instance of Armenia's Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts for offenses under Part 3 of the Article 253 of the country's Criminal Code — intentionally causing damage to a computer system with severe consequences."
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That's because it's a scam. That isn't the first time that story's been posted as a first post. Funny how a story about a botnet has a first post from someone probably using a botnet.
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What were the consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
for the staff in charge of security? (Since there was damage to multiple computer systems, not just unavailability)
Re:What were the consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing. After all, even if you have glass windows, if somebody throws a stone at them you do not share responsibility. Vandalism (and that is what was effectively done) is always 100% the fault of the vandal.
Now, having inadequate security is something else. But the respective laws are still in their infancy.
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If it was possible to prevent glass windows from being broken by properly maintaining them, having a window broken would indicate professional neglect (what translated into various crimes and civil actions for at least some professions).
There is no excuse for having an insecure system operating in an insecure manner while there are cheaper ways of having a secure system operating in a secure manner. Just because Microsoft taught people to accept glaring flaws and deficiencies as facts of life, doesn't mean
Re:What were the consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me give you a more valid window glass analogy. If you had invested in better glass, the kids rock would not have smashed your window.
Plus we're talking about DDoS here. That is not trivial to protect against. Your jab at Microsoft is silly.
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Your jab at Microsoft is silly.
No, he raises a good point. Way too many people just shrug and say "you can't write a bug-free program". It's like being brought up in a leaky shack, you'll have the attitude that a poorly constructed shack is "just the way it is." Without all those poorly constructed shacks, and all the people using them who have the attitude "there's nothing we can do about it" DDoSes would be much harder to pull off id Windows wasn't so easy to break into. Remember, the botnet is made up of
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And the command and control IRC servers are typically running on linux.
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Of course they are. The C&C operators don't want someone else to take over their botnets!
Re:What were the consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
How would you "secure" a system against a DDoS? The only solution is to throw money at the problem. Yes, you can mitigate to some degree, but the numbers get very big very fast regardless.
Quick google turns up "DDoS attack size broke 100 Gbps for first time" from Feb 2011. The only way to prevent 100 Gbps of traffic from drowning your site is to have *significantly* more than 100 Gbps of bandwidth available to you, or to hire someone who does. And even then, someone must pay for that bandwidth.
Another hurdle to overcome is if someone is attacking your application layer, you have to throw CPU cycles (and possibly RAM) at the problem to solve it. If you assume a typical HTTP request of 1k, handling or filtering 100M (or even 1M @ 1Gbps) http requests per second is going to require some hefty hardware. A quick google gives the number 3k requests per second for a typical apache server serving blank pages. You would need 300 web servers to handle 1M requests, and 30,000 to handle 100M requests. Numbers are just ballpark figures, and may be off by an order of magnitude or two, but you get the idea.
In short, protecting against a DDoS is hardly professional neglect. It's a financial decision. Even if you hire someone else to handle it for you, someone eventually pays the price.
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Indeed. Easy DDoS is a consequence of the design of the Internet. Defense is expensive, but entirely possible. Just talk to Akamai, they can tolerate basically anything that can be thrown at them with only local outages.
That said, even if the target could easily tolerate the DDoS done, the criminal doing it should still be punished.
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That is nonsense. It is possible to have unbreakable windows, but it is generally recognized that properly designed windows break only due to accidents or malicious intent. Liability comes into play for example for windows that break too easily, or, for car-glass, windows that break into large shards.
Now, what exactly the standards are that are acceptable in IT security is still in flux, but just because an attack was easy does not make the action of attacking any less malicious. Well, maybe lower in crimin
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If it was possible to prevent glass windows from being broken by properly maintaining them, having a window broken would indicate professional neglect (what translated into various crimes and civil actions for at least some professions).
There is no excuse for having an insecure system operating in an insecure manner while there are cheaper ways of having a secure system operating in a secure manner. Just because Microsoft taught people to accept glaring flaws and deficiencies as facts of life, doesn't mean that there should be no responsibility for having them.
I take it you never had to work for enterprise customers before? Try supporting 300 apps in 10 countries with different configurations for each tree in the forest on the AD? Now imagine a single piece of software in that configuration that requires all XP SP 2 desktops to have time frozen on March 2008 on a Tuesday or else megaCrap wont support the product?
You have over 120 updates for Windows 7 according to my desktop which includes the early 2009 version of Windows 7 if I rebuild it to make it modern to 2
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How do you damage a server merely by sending it too many requests? Surely it should just shut down if it overheats?
People set up servers for a reason - because they want visitors. Shutting them down isn't really a 'cure'.
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No, but the article said equipment was "damaged". Surely a shut down server is better than a damaged one? Isn't that a mandatory safety measure?
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No, but the article said equipment was "damaged"
Nope, the article said the *system* was damaged. That would cover more than physical damage to the hardware. I assume it would include denying the use of the system by attacking it with a botnet.
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How do you damage a server merely by sending it too many requests? Surely it should just shut down if it overheats?
What if it has an AMD CPU?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hot-spot,365.html [tomshardware.com]
Spam Flood (Score:4, Interesting)
"Never in the history of Slashdot have so many spam posts been posted by so few in such a short time".
Winston Smith.
(Perhaps triggered by "botnet author" in the articles title?)
damaged multiple computer systems ? (Score:3)
How does one *damage* a system via a DoS?
Sure, it's uncool and he needs to be in jail, but propagation of false concepts is just as dangerous, if not more...
( reminds me of the 'copyright infringement is theft' propaganda )
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By making it shit electrons all over itself. I hear that's quite a mess.
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How does one *damage* a system via a DoS?
Sure, it's uncool and he needs to be in jail, but propagation of false concepts is just as dangerous, if not more...
If my entire system becomes unusable because some fuckwits are DoSing it, then it has been damaged..If it is a business, there will be direct, real monetary losses You are just thinking about physical damage to the hardware, which is irrelevant.
( reminds me of the 'copyright infringement is theft' propaganda )
It reminds me of a drooling retard with a one track mind, but hey ho.
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It is if you're in Glendale, CA.
Interesting note from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the attacks that Avanesov was found guilty of instrumenting took place on Oct. 1, 2010, and targeted a Russian telecommunication company called Macomnet.
Ah. He foolishly attacked Mother Russia. Now I understand why he was convicted.
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I'm sure this computer criminal will pick up a bunch of new polite habits while rotting in Armenian prison. I can't wait to see him released and reformed!
Well, by that logic you wouldn't put anyone in jail in case they gotmore criminally hardened. Just remember that not all criminals are greedy geeks like this dweeb, there are also rapists, murderers and child molesters in prison too.
What a ruse (Score:1)