www.IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

The Communications Research Network (CRN) issued a statement where they warn that VoIP will become the next generation technology to command bot nets.

The technology of VoIP allows the botnet masters to hide their identity completely making it nearly impossible to trace the origin of DDoS attacks, unlike the current way most botnets are commanded such as over IM networks or IRC.

The CRN recommends the use of open protocols to prevent this abuse.

VoIP networks are often encrypted as well, to maximize the privacy of the users on the network, as well as to prevent ISP’s filtering the traffic in favor of their own VoIP services.

Jeanson James Ancheta, 20, of Downey, California, who was arrested in November of last year (we reported on his arrest here) has pleaded guilty to the charges of assembling a botnet, spamming, spreading of malicious software and profiting from these activities by selling services related to the botnet such as performing DDoS attacks.

Among the machines he infected and included in his botnet where computers at the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center and machines operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Australian government took an interesting path to battle the increasing problem of zombies on the Internet. Zombie is the term for PC’s which have been infected with software and then being abused by malicious people using them for spam, but also for example for DDoS attacks.

It is Senator Helen Coonan, minister for communications, information technology and the arts that came up with the plan for a 3 month trial. A total of 5 ISP’s have been selected for the trial.

Worldwide the interest from the law enforcing organizations towards rolling up botnets is increasing. Only  a month ago the Dutch police arrested three men who were controlling a net containing an estimated 1500000 machines.

Now Jeanson James Ancheta, 20, of Downey, California has been arrested last Tuesday by the FBI. Apparently it is the first time that a person has been arrested who is selling time on his botnet to outsiders.

The Dutch police have arrested three men, ages 19, 22 and 27 year-old, who were running a network of compromised machines that was counting around 100000 total.

The 19 year-old is considered the prime suspect and the coder of the virus used, W32.Toxbot. The virus was first noticed at the start of this year.

An IRC channel was used to control the bots, and send them commands. They were used in DDoS attacks, and information was collected from online banking services (PayPal) and eBay accounts with the aid of a key-logger.