The Broadband Guide
SG
search advanced

Botnet Targets CIA, Google, Others With Junk Data

2010-02-02 09:55 by
Tags: , ,

 

About 315 Web sites, including domains operated by the CIA, the FBI, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, are being deluged with junk data, enough in some cases to qualify as a denial of service attack.

The source is the Pushdo botnet, which has been operating since at least 2007. Pushdo bots distribute the Wigon rootkit and the Cutwail spam trojan most often.

In an online post on Friday, Shadowserver security researcher Steven Adair said that some 315 Web sites are being sent junk data via SSL connections.

"Technically they are being attacked, although knocking the sites offline doesn't seem to be the goal," he says. "The bots seem to start to initiate an SSL connection and [send] a bit of junk to the Web sites and then disconnect. They do not actually request an resources from the Web site or do anything else other than repeat the cycle periodically. They are doing this to hundreds of sites all day long."

For Web sites set up to deal with lots of traffic, like chrome.google.com and ssl.bing.com, the data surge hasn't noticeably degraded site performance, though it may inflate bandwidth bills.

Read more -here-

 

  Post your review/comments
    rate:
   avg:
News Glossary of Terms FAQs Polls Cool Links SpeedGuide Teams SG Premium Services SG Gear Store
Registry Tweaks Broadband Tools Downloads/Patches Broadband Hardware SG Ports Database Security Default Passwords User Stories
Broadband Routers Wireless Firewalls / VPNs Software Hardware User Reviews
Broadband Security Editorials General User Articles Quick Reference
Broadband Forums General Discussions
Advertising Awards Link to us Server Statistics Helping SG About