NBN to accelerate botnet attacks?
- 09 July, 2009 09:03
- Comments 6
The National Broadband Network (NBN) could prove to be a best friend to cyber criminals, according to the head of the Australia's National Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT).
Speaking at a cyber security roundtable in Sydney, Graham Ingram, general manager at AusCERT said cyber criminals currently placed a premium on infecting PCs which were connected to high-speed networks.
“We have seen cyber criminals reject using dial-up based computers because they aren’t fast enough,” he said.
Anecdotally, the penetration of malicious activity had become almost directly proportional to broadband connectivity speed, Ingram said.
“The same compromised PCs in homes we have now will be the same ones connecting to a faster communications channel via the NBN,” he said. “This will simply amplify the problems we have now significantly.”
Also speaking at the roundtable, chief research officer at F-Secure Mikko Hypponen said connection speed had a decisive role in the selection of PCs for denial of service attacks and spamming botnets.
“We have seen malware which when it infects a PC, the first thing it does is connect to a university file server to download a gigabyte size Linux installation DVD package to clock the speed. If it is too slow it just rejects the PC. [Hackers] have so many machines at their disposal they can choose to be picky.”
Another implication of the NBN was that it was likely to be leveraged for VoIP services, which were increasingly being used in phishing and other cyber security attacks, Ingram said.
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Comments
Michael
So what? Let's stop the progress? Let's go back to dial-up connections?
Stop crying and find a way to solve the problem (if it exists).
Anonymous
AusCERT, what the hell is wrong with you? Saying "faster internet will make it easier for someone to hack into people's PC's" is like saying "fast cars will help bank robbers get away".
Anonymous
Risk Management
How are you going to set up a risk management plan if people don't discuss potential risks?
Anonymous
I'm going to guess that AusCERT's comments were up-played slightly for the sake of a good headline. But regarding your analogy - it's true, isn't it? Fast cars *will* help bank robbers get away more easily. Graham Ingram (as far as we can tell from this article) doesn't seem to be advocating we get rid of the NBN, just that we have to be prepared for the consequences. As per your analogy, this actually happened when the NSW police bought WRXes to keep up with hoons.
Greg
So we shouldn't have fast networks because of botnets? If people stopped downloading files from dubious sources or installed decent antivirus software, many of which can be used legally for free, botnets wouldn't be a problem.
Anonymous
Just like South Korea...
There was that experience when South Korea's government mandated broadband, and for several months .KR was a spam capital until their providers worked to actively block their ignorant users' never-will-be-patched Windows systems that were left on 24/7. I'm expecting the same thing of Australian broadband providers having to expand their current levels of malware safeguards, both incoming threats, and -outgoing-.
Frankly, from my experience with working at an ISP, Australians aren't smart enough to understand the malware threat. (Hands up everyone with a thick relative who carrys-on about installing Nortons..)
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