Blog: The Botnets That Won't Die

The Botnets That Won't Die
Technology Review (04/21/11) Kurt Kleiner

Researchers warn that coordinated attacks on conventional botnets could lead spammers and criminal organizations to pursue more resilient communication schemes. Although conventional botnets are controlled by a few central computers, botnets that use peer-to-peer communications protocols pass messages from machine to machine. The controller inserts a command into one or more of the peers and it is spread gradually throughout the network. Some botnets using peer-to-peer communications have been implemented, but authorities have been able to infiltrate and disrupt them by spreading phony commands, files, and information. Meanwhile, Los Alamos National Laboratory's Stephen Eidenbenz and colleagues have designed and simulated a botnet that potentially would be even more difficult to shut down--one that would randomly configure itself into a hierarchy, with peers accepting commands only from machines higher up in the hierarchy, and would reconfigure the hierarchy every day.

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