From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Tue Apr 17 2007 - 00:19:52 CDT

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Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkc4i.org>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/16/military_botnet/

By John Leyden and Dan Goodin
16th April 2007

Security researchers have traced spam-sending botnet clients back to
networks run by the US military.

Support Intelligence, the firm whose research on honeynets revealed that
the networks of at least 28 Fortune 1000 companies contained
malware-infected spam-spewing PCs, has found evidence of bots running
behind military networks.

Rick Wesson, chief exec of Support Intelligence, said the firm's
honeynet system has received Viagra spam from an IP address owned by the
Randolph Airforce base. Support Intelligence has also observed bots -
running IP addresses owned by the Directorate of Information Management
- trying to connect to botnet command and control servers, evidence that
PCs run by the directorate have become spam proxies under the control of
hackers.

Most security experts associate malware-infected PCs that form the
zombie components of botnet networks with careless consumers. The work
of Support Intelligence suggests that large IT firms, including HP and
Oracle, as well as the US military, are also partly responsible for the
deluge of stock offer scams, penis pill offers, and other assorted tat
that deluges surfers' inboxes every day.

The misuse of US military networks by spammers and other pond life is
infrequently reported, but goes back some years. In August 2004, we
reported how blog comment spams promoting illegal porn sites were sent
through compromised machines associated with unclassified US military
networks. Spam advertising "incest, rape and animal sex" pornography was
posted on a web log which was set up to discuss the ID Cards Bill via an
open proxy at the gateway of an unclassified military network.

*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
================================================================
C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org
*==============================================================*

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