Kelihos botnet Targeted

2017-04-11

I often find myself ridiculed by others who would scoff at my rather draconian security measures compared to many others out there who don't even bother to learn their firewall implementations and exploit countermeasures because they don't want to limit access to the public domain.

Well, I have often said that the internet has evolved into a very unfriendly place with others out there attempting to hijack your equipment and purpose it to do their bidding in the form of exploits they attempt to plant on any unsuspecting server farm.

One such exploit is the Kelihos botnet.

The Feds are after this massive botnet which has been responsible for millions of annual spam emails sent internationally with the arrest in Spain of one Peter Yuryevich Levashov, 36, a Russian who allegedly was it's operational kingpin with activity spanning the past seven or so years.

A global network of malware infected Windoze machines spamming adverts for counterfeit pharmaceuticals and fraudulent stock offers as well as stolen password lists lead to the action which consisted of court orders and a multiple jurisdictional search warrant obtained by the US which permitted replacement of infected servers with others controlled by the federal authorities.

So when you read of exploits and malware taking out a friend or coworker you might want to reconsider your position on security and the public facing server. Too many of us are pretty naive when it comes to security and the stakes can be quite high from a personal investment in time and funds perspective.

I would hate to incur the down time associated from a reinstall, restore from backup, and reconfigure ... if I can avoid the need.