UC Santa Barbara researchers hack botnet
UC Santa Barbara researchers hack botnet
What if we were somehow able to hijack a virus and find out how it’s functioning? What if we could see who the most vulnerable targets are?
This is exactly what UCSB researchers did earlier this year.
Researchers hijacked the Torpig botnet for ten days until the original creators created an update to regain control over their malware.
In this time, UCSB researchers were able to:
- collect 70 GB of data that had been stolen from other users
- gather 56,000 stolen passwords within an hour
- uncover hundreds of stored personal e-mail, forum, and chat messages
This successful ten day control was maintained by researchers who found a weakness in how the bots generate lists of domains they plan to hack.
Since some of these domains were not registered yet, researchers registered the domains themselves and then set up servers so the bots could connect.
One important discovery was how Torpig steals financial information from users.
Turns out that the bot steals information from password managers, not the actual login sessions themselves.
How can you protect yourself from Torpig?
Make your passwords difficult, the easier they are to guess, the more susceptible you become.
As for researchers who attempt to hack into the malware itself?
Go get ‘em tiger.
