A botnet for hire springs up

BOTNETS FOR HIRE are becoming more user friendly as they offer users the opportunity to take down Internet services after making a simple payment.

Insecurity outfit Damballa revealed that the creatively named IMDDOS (I'm DDoS) botnet can be hired out as "pressure test software" by those who are willing to cough up some cash and download an application. The application is little more than dialogue box allowing the user to point the botnet to a particular IP address and port number and start hitting it with spurious requests.

Botnets have long been used not just to send out spam but also to coordinate attacks upon websites as an extortion tactic. While botnets have been hired out for years, doing so has been a relatively hush-hush matter, but now anyone armed with a credit card can pull the trigger.

Damballa claim that the IMDDOS botnet is growing at a rate of more than 10,000 new nodes daily. The operators of this 'botnet for hire' are based in China, however nodes are all over the globe.

The security firm is working with authorities to shut down parts of the botnet that are based in the US. However, educating users not to unwittingly enlist their systems into the IMDDOS botnet is just as important as trying to shut it down.

History predicts a long battle ahead for authorities and security firms as they try to purge the Internet of botnets. µ