Recession hit Cyber-crime just doesn't pay like it used to.

Recession hits Cybercrime! With botnets everywhere, DDoS attacks get cheaper $30 will buy a one-day DDoS attack now!

Security researchers say the cost of criminal services such as distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks has dropped in recent months. The reason? Market economics. "The barriers to entry in that marketplace are so low you have people basically flooding the market," said Jose Nazario, a security researcher with Arbor Networks. "The way you differentiate yourself is on price."

Criminals have gotten better at hacking into unsuspecting computers and linking them together into so-called botnet networks, which can then be centrally controlled. Botnets are used to send spam, steal passwords, and sometimes to launch DDoS attacks, which flood victims' servers with unwanted information. Often these networks are rented out as a kind of criminal software-as-a-service to third parties, who are typically recruited in online discussion boards.

DDoS attacks have been used to censor critics, take down rivals, wipe out online competitors and even extort money from legitimate businesses. Earlier this year a highly publicised DDoS attack targeted U.S. and South Korean servers, knocking a number of Web sites offline.

Are botnet operators having to cut costs like other businesses in these troubled economic times? Security researchers don't know if that's been a factor, but they do say that the supply of infected machines has been growing. In 2008, Symantec's Internet sensors counted an average of 75,158 active bot-infected computers per day, a 31 percent jump from the previous year.

DDoS attacks may have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per day a few years ago, but in recent months researchers have seen them going for bargain-basement prices.

Nazario has seen DDoS attacks offered in the US$100-per-day range, but according to SecureWorks Security Researcher Kevin Stevens, prices have dropped to $30 to $50 on some Russian forums.

And DDoS attacks aren't the only thing getting cheaper. Stevens says the cost of stolen credit card numbers and other kinds of identity information has dropped too. "Prices are dropping on almost everything," he said.

While $100 per day might cover a garden-variety 100MB/second to 400MB/second attack, it might also procure something much weaker, depending on the seller. "There's a lot of crap out there where you don't really know what you're getting," said Zulfikar Ramzan, a technical director with Symantec Security Response. "Even though we are seeing some lower prices, it doesn't mean that you're going to get the same quality of goods."

In general, prices for access to botnet computers have dropped dramatically since 2007, he said. But with the influx of generic and often untrustworthy services, players at the high end can now charge more, Ramzan said.

Cyber criminals can empty business accounts in minutes

Modern Methods to move and transfer Money, ensure that it moves fast and it can be equally fast going from your account with Automated Clearing House (ACH) fraud.

These criminals are not stupid. They knew what they were doing when they hit the US Western Beaver County School District and they knew when to strike.

They waited until school administrators were away on holiday, and then during a four-day period between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2, siphoned US$704,610.35 out of two of the school district's bank accounts. Western Beaver's financial institution, ESB Bank, managed to reverse some of the transfers, but the Pennsylvania school district was out more than $441,000.

On July 9, Western Beaver sued ESB to try and recover the money, but security experts say that it's just one of many organisations that have been hit in recent months by a disturbing new type of financial fraud that can often leave the victim holding the empty bag.

Fraudsters are taking advantage of the widely used but obscure Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network in order to pull off their attacks. This financial network is used by financial institutions to handle direct deposits, checks, bill payments and cash transfers between businesses and individuals.
In April, ACH fraudsters moved $1.2 million out of a Sugar Land, Texas, importer called Unique Industrial Products, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. They did this by hacking into the company's computers and then authorising 39 transfers to move the money out of Unique Industrial's account. Although the bulk of the money was recovered, scammers made $150,000 from the attack -- not bad for 30 minutes of work.

Rejoice! Latvian ISP linked to online criminal activity booted out of Internet

IDG News Service — A Latvian ISP linked to online criminal activity has been cut off from the Internet, following complaints from Internet security researchers.

Real Host, based in Riga, Latvia was thought to control command-and-control servers for infected botnet PCs, and had been linked to phishing sites, Web sites that launched attack code at visitors and were also home to malicious "rogue" antivirus products, according to a researcher using the pseudonym Jart Armin, who works on the Hostexploit.com Web site.

"This is maybe one of the top European centers of crap," he said in an e-mail interview.

"It was a cesspool of criminal activity," said Paul Ferguson a researcher with Trend Micro.

The ISP was disconnected from the Internet by its upstream provider, Junik, on Monday, after its provider, TeliaSonera told it to stop servicing Real Host or face sanctions Armin said.

Real Host was considered a "bullet proof" hosting provider, that would allow customers to remain online even after they had been linked to malicious activity. It had been linked to the Zeus botnet-making software.

This isn't the first time this type of hosting provider has been knocked offline. In the past year, at least three U.S. ISPs: Atrivo, McColo and 3FN have been unplugged after security researchers built cases against them. Atrivo and McColo were also taken offline by their upstream providers. 3FN was shut down by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

But according to Armin, this may be the "first time an international group has achieved this across borders and in Eastern Europe."

In the past, these takedowns have had a serious affect on spam. And while some observers reported a noticeable drop in spam over the weekend, security experts say that this was probably not attributable to the Real Host takedown.

Observers expect to see the criminal activity linked to Real Host resume soon, but they say that the takedown puts some pressure on the bad guys and the networks that provide service to them. "The precedent that's being set right now is that you need to take some responsibility for your network," said Lawrence Baldwin, owner of security research firm Mynetwatchman.

"There actually are some consequences now for allowing an obviously heavy concentration of criminal activity on your networks. It's just not going to be accepted anymore."

Nine very scarey things about Botnets

In a shrinking universe, the Botnet world is expanding.

Let me warn you that this article will paint a scarey picture of botnets taking over all PCs, both the ones on corporate networks as well as the ones at home.

I am sure you have long wondered just how widespread the botnet problem is. What you will learn is enough to make you want to return to the days of stand-alone computing. The reality is worse than most people suspect.

Here is a list of nine known things about botnets that will scare you but perhaps this article will help you to increase your effort to keep your PCs off the illicit botnets.

1. The process of developing software that creates and controls botnets has reached a professional level. Forget the amateur script kiddies that are out for kicks; developers are in it to make a lot of money. The techniques they use to create malware or command and control software are as sophisticated as those used by any commercial software company.

What's more, this underground development community is very cooperative, like a quasi-legitimate open source community. Software is shrink-wrapped, packaged and sold or passed around. The developers add their "personal touches" to create many variants of the malware. Finjan reports that the Golden Cash network operated by cybercriminals provides an exploit toolkit as well as an attack toolkit to distribute malware.

2. Once a PC is captured by a botnet, the use of that PC can be bought and sold many times e.g. the Golden Cash network is a vast botnet exchange. Cyberthieves purchase malware-infected PCs from anyone in the underground market, and then like bond traders, they bundle them and resell them to criminals who want to rent the use of a botnet. This provides a great incentive for criminals to create even larger botnets.

3. Botnets use multiple automated propagation vectors to spread, including spam, worms, viruses and drive-by download attacks e.g. legitimate Web sites are often compromised with HTML tags that force a victim's browser to download JavaScript code from a server that's controlled by the attacker.

That code can launch a number of exploits against the unsuspecting PC. If any of the exploits is successful, the PC can become the next zombie on the botnet, making it easier than ever for the attacker to collect new nodes on his illicit network.

4. The malware that turns the PC into a bot can hide as a rootkit, making it exceptionally hard to detect and eradicate the malware. The Torpig botnet, as an example, implants Mebroot on the victim PC. Mebroot is a rootkit that replaces the system's Master Boot Record. Therefore, the PC is under the attacker's control even before the operating system loads.

5. Once installed, the malware can attack and nullify the very software that is supposed to prevent or at least detect the malware infection. Intel researchers report that botnet developers have begun to target the antivirus, local firewall and intrusion prevention/detection software and services.

The researchers identified at least two ways that a botnet blocked the security software from getting updates:

• A botnet changed the local DNS settings of the affected system to disable the antivirus software from reaching its update site.
• A botnet was actively detecting connection attempts to the update site and blocking them.

6. Botnet malware code is often polymorphic; that is, it changes with every new infection. This means that signature-based antivirus software is useless against it. What's more, the Intel researchers have discovered the use of techniques such as code obfuscation, encryption and encoding that further hide the true nature of the code, making it hard for antivirus software to detect it.

7. Botnets can be reprogrammed, allowing their missions to change. One day the botnet can be sending out spam, and the next day it can be told to collect credit card information from the infected PCs.

8. It used to be that bots generated a lot of "noise," making it easier to spot a compromised PC on a network. These days, some bots transmit little traffic, helping them to fly under the radar of log management systems. What's more, botnet traffic can masquerade as legitimate network traffic, making it hard to detect.

9. Legitimate applications such as Web browsers or office productivity tools can be compromised as part of the botnet's malware infection. For instance, the Torpig botnet injects malevolent DLLs into browsers, popular applications, e-mail clients, instant messengers and system programs. After the injection, Torpig can peruse and steal any data that is handled by these applications, including logon IDs and passwords.

If you were under the impression that botnets are no big deal, it's time to realise that they are a big threat and that they are to legitimate businesses and organisations. Now all you have to do is find ways to detect botnet infestations on your network.