Reaper Botnet expanding to do what ?

[Lee B]

This story has been out there on tech sites for a little while and just found it way to the mainstream media.

I have been using online SaS accounting and payroll software for sometime now, but not tax software.

Stories like this one are making me reconsider whether that is a good idea ?

Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON _ Just as hurricane trackers chart storms in the Atlantic before they make landfall, cybersecurity researchers track viral infections that threaten mayhem. They've found a doozy.

A massive zombie robotic network, or botnet, has expanded to infect "an estimated million organizations" and could bring corners of the internet to its knees, an Israeli cybersecurity company, Check Point Software, says.

"The next cyber hurricane is about to come," Check Point says.

Several cybersecurity researchers Monday confirmed Check Point's findings, saying the botnet could replicate, and perhaps dwarf, the Mirai botnet that almost exactly a year ago took down major websites on the Atlantic Coast, crippling a part of the internet's backbone and slowing traffic to a crawl.

The botnet, which has been named either "Reaper" or "IoTroop," was first detected in mid-September. A Chinese cybersecurity firm, Qihoo 360, says the botnet is swelling by 10,000 devices a day, forcibly recruiting foot soldiers in an ever-larger invisible rogue army.

Cybercrime gangs form botnets by infecting internet-enabled devices, often wireless cameras or routers with weak security features. Once corralled, controllers can send commands for the botnet to overwhelm a target, knocking its website off line or crippling the internet.The new botnet has spread across the United States, Australia and other parts of the globe, researchers say, although Check Point notes that "it is too early to assess the intentions" of those propagating the infection.

"It could be something that's meant to create global chaos," Maya Horowitz, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point, said in a telephone interview from Israel. "But it could be something that's more targeted," perhaps aimed at a country or industry.

She said it is unlikely that cybersecurity experts will be able to halt an eventual attack.

"The chances are pretty low for that," Horowitz said, adding that like an epidemic of infectious disease, "each infected device is looking for other devices to compromise."

Criminal hackers are assembling increasingly powerful botnets.

"They are getting bigger and badder," said Robert Hamilton, director of marketing at Imperva Incapsula, a Redwood Shores, California, cybersecurity firm that offers technology to mitigate botnet attacks.

"The motive more than ever is money," he said, adding that criminal gangs send ransom demands to companies threatening to hit them with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack unless paid off

 

"We had a client that received a letter that said 'if you don't pay us, we are going to bring your websites down with a DDoS attack,'" Hamilton said. "This was a client that you'd definitely recognize their name," declining to specify the company.

Last year's Mirai botnet attack hit Dyn, a New Hampshire company that provides backbone services for the internet. Imperva says it found 49,657 infected devices spread over 164 countries. The top infected countries were Vietnam, Brazil and the United States.

Scores of major companies were hit in that Oct. 21, 2016, attack, including Netflix, Twitter, Spotify, HBO, Amazon, CNN, ancestry.com and Comcast.

The new botnet is based on the source code for Mirai, Horowitz said, "but about 100 different functions have been added ... and it has the potential to reach many, many more devices."

The malware creating the botnet is infecting a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) devices but has been found with functions to target networking gear or routers manufactured by D-Link, TP-Link, AVTECH, NETGEAR, MikroTik, Linksys and Synology, Check Point said.

"Since Reaper is exploiting a number of known vulnerabilities in different IoT devices, this botnet could definitely be much more disruptive than Mirai," said Merike Kaeo, chief technology officer at Farsight Security, a San Mateo, Calif., cybersecurity firm. "Known security issues in cameras, televisions, home routers, and any other internet-connected devices need to be addressed and fixed."

 

Consumers can do their bit by checking to ensure that "all of their internet-connected devices, especially home routers, have the latest firmware upgrades and security patches installed," Kaeo said.

(c)2017 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Written by Tim Johnson

 

 

[Abby Normal]

We need a Mad emoji.

[Elrod]

Mad..........                         Or                        Mad......

[BulldogTom]

The Second one is perfect.  the first one just looks confused.

Tom
Modesto, CA

[Abby Normal]

Yeah we already have a confused emoji. A WTF emoji would come in handy too.

[Abby Normal]

I see we have a 'downvote' now. I guess that's like a 'don't like' button? Could encompass mad/angry, I suppose.

[Medlin Software, Dennis]

The online software thing is always a quandary.  We get asked about it from time to time.  Given there is no 100% access, many are not comfortable with SaS for things like their payroll.  (There have been outages for more than 24 hours - I got calls from non customers asking what they should do because Intuit was down!)  There are even a few locations where the "privacy" regulations essentially prohibit employers from having employee data out of their control/locality (although I suspect the rule is plain ignored).

On the other hand, having data out of people's hands is many times safer, although access is not really improved, since one could use remote software to access your desktop.  Data entry and processing speed can also crawl while waiting for online back and forth.

Cost of SaS is an issue.  One cannot get data access and storage online for free, so the customer has to pay somehow.  Either as a per use item (which also adds cost for management) or at some sort of fixed rate, large enough to cover the average customer usage (and maybe more than you actually use).

One aspect of security is to be a small fish.  SaS, ESPECIALLY payroll, is a HUGE fish, and something nefarious types are certainly constantly trying to exploit.  So having your desktop be the place holding your software and data, behind even just a fair security setup, is exponentially less likely to be compromised.

Knowing what I do about at least one major tax prep company, I would never use a tax prep person or company who uses SaS or a corp online system.

[jklcpa]

1 hour ago, Abby Normal said:

I see we have a 'downvote' now. I guess that's like a 'don't like' button? Could encompass mad/angry, I suppose.

 

We're discussing it and I'm sure that Eric will come up with something that will work for us. The downvote is more than not liking something because it registers a negative vote against the person, so I don't think that's a good thing to use in this instance.  A member that is being helpful by posting information that we find troublesome or problematic shouldn't be assigned negative points. 

[BulldogTom]

1 hour ago, jklcpa said:

 

We're discussing it and I'm sure that Eric will come up with something that will work for us. The downvote is more than not liking something because it registers a negative vote against the person, so I don't think that's a good thing to use in this instance.  A member that is being helpful by posting information that we find troublesome or problematic shouldn't be assigned negative points. 

You mean I can sabotage people by giving them negative votes?  Sweeeeet.   I can be a real terror on the board now.

Thanks for the info Judy.

Tom
Modesto, CA

[Eric]

I'm still tweaking the reactions.  I've removed the downvote, and added Thumbs Down and Angry.  I'll create a new thread soon to explain the additions instead of derailing this one any further