Botnet Information & Bot Removal Tools and Application

What is a botnet?

Quoting Wikipedia:

Quote:Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is often associated with malicious software but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software.

While the term "botnet" can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, this word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised computers (called Zombie computers) running software, usually installed via worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command-and-control infrastructure.

A botnet's originator (aka "bot herder") can control the group remotely, usually through a means such as IRC, and usually for nefarious purposes. Individual programs manifest as IRC "bots". Often the command-and-control takes place via an IRC server or a specific channel on a public IRC network. This server is known as the command-and-control server ("C&C"). Though rare, more experienced botnet operators program their own commanding protocols from scratch. The constituents of these protocols include a server program, client program for operation, and the program that embeds itself on the slave's machine (bot). All three of these usually communicate with each other over a network using a unique encryption scheme for stealth and protection against detection or intrusion into the botnet network.

A bot typically runs hidden and complies with the RFC 1459 (IRC) standard. Generally, the perpetrator of the botnet has compromised a series of systems using various tools (exploits, buffer overflows, as well as others; see also RPC). Newer bots can automatically scan their environment and propagate themselves using vulnerabilities and weak passwords. Generally, the more vulnerabilities a bot can scan and propagate through, the more valuable it becomes to a botnet controller community. The process of stealing computing resources as a result of a system being joined to a "botnet" is sometimes referred to as "scrumping."

Botnets have become a significant part of the Internet, albeit increasingly hidden. Due to most conventional IRC networks taking measures and blocking access to previously-hosted botnets, controllers must now find their own servers. Often, a botnet will include a variety of connections and network types. Sometimes a controller will hide an IRC server installation on an educational or corporate site where high-speed connections can support a large number of other bots. Exploitation of this method of using a bot to host other bots has proliferated only recently as most script kiddies do not have the knowledge to take advantage of it.

Several botnets have been found and removed from the Internet. The Dutch police found a 1.4 million node botnet and the Norwegian ISP Telenor disbanded a 10,000-node botnet. Large coordinated international efforts to shut down botnets have also been initiated. It has been estimated that up to one quarter of all personal computers connected to the internet may be part of a botnet.

Basically, a botnet is a mass number of PC's infected with a trojan or worm that allows the hacker to remotely control the PC.

Formation and Exploitation:

Quoting Wikipedia:

Quote:This example illustrates how a botnet is created and used to send email spam.

1. A botnet operator sends out viruses or worms, infecting ordinary users' computers, whose payload is a malicious application -- the bot.
2. The bot on the infected PC logs into a particular C&C server (often an IRC server, but, in some cases a web server).
3. A spammer purchases access to the botnet from the operator.
4. The spammer sends instructions via the IRC server to the infected PCs, ...
5. ...causing them to send out spam messages to mail servers.

Botnets are exploited for various purposes, including denial-of-service attacks, creation or misuse of SMTP mail relays for spam (see Spambot), click fraud, spamdexing and the theft of application serial numbers, login IDs, and financial information such as credit card numbers.

The botnet controller community features a constant and continuous struggle over who has the most bots, the highest overall bandwidth, and the most "high-quality" infected machines, like university, corporate, and even government machines.

Types of Attacks:

Denial-of-service attacks where multiple systems autonomously access a single Internet system or service in a way that appears legitimate, but much more frequently than normal use and cause the system to become busy.
Adware exists to advertise some commercial entity actively and without the user's permission or awareness.
Spyware is software which sends information to its creators about a user's activities.
E-mail spam are e-mail messages disguised as messages from people, but are either advertising, annoying, or malicious in nature.
Click fraud is the user's computer visiting websites without the user's awareness to create false web traffic for the purpose of personal or commercial gain.
Access number replacements are where the botnet operator replaces the access numbers of a group of dial-up bots to that of a slave's phone number. Given enough bots partake in this attack, the slave is consistently bombarded with phone calls attempting to connect to the internet. Having very little to defend against this attack, most are forced into changing their phone numbers (land line, cell phone, etc).
Fast flux is a DNS technique used by botnets to hide phishing and malware delivery sites behind an ever-changing network of compromised hosts acting as proxies.

Preventive Measures:

If a machine receives a denial-of-service attack from a botnet, few choices exist. Given the general geographic dispersal of botnets, it becomes difficult to identify a pattern of offending machines, and the sheer volume of IP addresses does not lend itself to the filtering of individual cases. Passive OS fingerprinting can identify attacks originating from a botnet: network administrators can configure newer firewall equipment to take action on a botnet attack by using information obtained from passive OS fingerprinting. The most serious preventive measures utilize rate-based intrusion prevention systems implemented with specialized hardware.

Some botnets use free DNS hosting services such as DynDns.org, No-IP.com, and Afraid.org to point a subdomain towards an IRC server that will harbor the bots. While these free DNS services do not themselves host attacks, they provide reference points (often hard-coded into the botnet executable). Removing such services can cripple an entire botnet. Recently, these companies have undertaken efforts to purge their domains of these subdomains. The botnet community refers to such efforts as "nullrouting", because the DNS hosting services usually re-direct the offending subdomains to an inaccessible IP address.

The botnet server structure mentioned above has inherent vulnerabilities and problems. For example, if one was to find one server with one botnet channel, often all other servers, as well as other bots themselves, will be revealed. If a botnet server structure lacks redundancy, the disconnection of one server will cause the entire botnet to collapse, at least until the controller(s) decides on a new hosting space. However, more recent IRC server software includes features to mask other connected servers and bots, so that a discovery of one channel will not lead to disruption of the botnet.

Several security companies such as Afferent Security Labs, Symantec, Trend Micro, FireEye, Simplicita and Damballa have announced offerings to stop botnets. While some, like Norton AntiBot, are aimed at consumers, most are aimed to protect enterprises and/or ISPs. The host-based techniques use heuristics to try to identify bot behavior that has bypassed conventional anti-virus software. Network-based approaches tend to use the techniques described above; shutting down C&C servers, nullrouting DNS entries, or completely shutting down IRC servers.

Newer botnets are almost entirely P2P, with command-and-control embedded into the botnet itself. By being dynamically updateable and variable they can evade having any single point of failure. Commanders can be identified solely through secure keys and all data except the binary itself can be encrypted. For example a spyware program may encrypt all suspected passwords with a public key hard coded or distributed into the bot software. Only with the private key, which only the commander has, can the data that the bot has captured be read.

Newer botnets have even been capable of detecting and reacting to attempts to figure out how they work. A large botnet that can detect that its being studied can even DDoS those studying it off the internet.

I believe botnets and botnet behavior have evolved to such a point of sophistication that it won't be easy to detect less wellknown botnets. Moreever, open source botnets are often heavily modded, and thus, changing its hashvalue and making it harder for AV companies to detected. There is also much debate about how AV's classify botnet distributed malware, due to AV's ignoring the "botnet" part. Also, botnets are now increasingly sold and trafficked within the underground economy.

Here is a list of some more known botnets:

Zeus
Spyeye
Conficker
Kraken
Srizbi
Bobax
Rustock
Cutwail
Storm
Grum
Onewordsub
Mega-D
Nucrypt
Wopla
Spamthru

Removal/Prevention:

Trend Micro RUBotted:
Trend Micro RUBotted (Beta) is a small program that runs on your computer, watching for bot related activities. RUBotted intelligently monitors your computer's system behavior for activities that are potentially harmful to both your computer and other people's computers.

RUBotted monitors for remote command and control (C&C) commands sent from a bot-herder to control your computer. Additionally, RUBotted watches for an array of potentially malicious bot-related activities, including mass mailing a common activity performed by a bot-infected computer.

RUBotted co-exists with your existing AV software, providing advanced bot specific behavior monitoring. RUBotted does not rely on frequent, network intensive updates to ensure your computer's continued protection.

Screenshot: