Communications of the ACM
Battling Zombies, Botnets and Torpig
"If you control an entire network of . . . hundreds of thousands of home computers, you can do an awful lot of damage," says John Aycock, an associate professor in the University of Calgary's Department of Computer Science.
Credit: University of Calgary
University of Calgary (UC) researchers are developing a range of technologies to prevent and detect cyberattacks and botnets. "It's an issue of scale," says UC professor John Aycock. "If you control an entire network of tens or hundreds of thousands of home computers, you can do an awful lot of damage." Aycock says that most experts believe that botnet creators have gone from basement hackers to sophisticated online invaders with possible links to organized crime.
"The motivation used to be to put another notch in your belt, today it's very much money-driven," says University of California, Santa Barbara professor Richard A. Kemmerer. Last year Kemmerer led a research group that took control of the Torpig botnet and posed as hackers. The researchers saw more than 180,000 infections, obtained 8,310 account credentials at more than 400 different institutions, and uncovered 70,000 passwords.
Kemmerer says a preemptive approach is the only way to ensure effective Internet security.
From University of Calgary
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