Article: Anatomy of a spambot
By: John Brandon
Date Published:10/19/2017
In John Brandon's article for ComputerWorld, he informs the reader on what exactly spambots are and how they work. Brandon starts off by explaining how spambots are created and what they need to "live". For a spambot to be run, they need email addresses to try to infect other computers through. Often, their creators will go onto the dark web and purchase information from data breaches such as "email addresses, passwords and dates of birth" to put to work with their spambots. So, how exactly do computers get infected by these spambots? Brandon explains that there are many ways they have infected computers in the past; however, they "are always shifting tactics." One of the most common ways in through links and attachments that are sent to different individuals, and once opened, malware is downloaded onto the system. Typically, creators use mostly the same tactics as phishing scammers to get people to download malware onto different systems. Then, once the spambot has been installed onto the system, "it can start sending out more emails" to work on getting other computers to also be infected.
So, what is actually happening with the spambot? John Brandon talks about how once a spambot has infected a system, along with sending emails out to others, it also works under a "master bot." In other words, it listens to whatever information is being passed along from the creator on who or where to try to target next. Once a bot has been detected by a system and can no longer send out spam, spambots typically work on other tasks "such as traffic spoofing... or participating in a denial-of-service attack" instead. However, unlike other malware, spambots are also relatively easy to get rid of. Since spambots are normally poorly coded, updating any old anti-malware and running a few system scans can usually get rid of all of them.
I really feel that this article did a good job of explaining what a spambot was to the reader. Before this article, I hardly knew much about them. However, now I not only know how they are spread, but I also understand the ideas behind them to keep spreading. The best thing for the public to be aware of is that you should never open emails from unknown senders or open unexpected attachments from people we know. Hopefully, as computer security continues to grow, we can find new and better ways to keep spambots from even breaching systems. One idea that really keeps standing out to me is the idea of behavior based anti-virus systems. If we worked with that idea to stop spambots, we could potentially stop them before they even got the ball rolling on installing the malware. The best thing for the public to do to protect against spambots for now is just to keep anti-malware systems up to date and current.
Article:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3233127/security/anatomy-of-a-spambot.html?upd=1508472294460
Picture:
https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2014/07/29/spam-bot-invaders-which-countries-send-the-most-spam-infographic/
By: John Brandon
Date Published:10/19/2017
In John Brandon's article for ComputerWorld, he informs the reader on what exactly spambots are and how they work. Brandon starts off by explaining how spambots are created and what they need to "live". For a spambot to be run, they need email addresses to try to infect other computers through. Often, their creators will go onto the dark web and purchase information from data breaches such as "email addresses, passwords and dates of birth" to put to work with their spambots. So, how exactly do computers get infected by these spambots? Brandon explains that there are many ways they have infected computers in the past; however, they "are always shifting tactics." One of the most common ways in through links and attachments that are sent to different individuals, and once opened, malware is downloaded onto the system. Typically, creators use mostly the same tactics as phishing scammers to get people to download malware onto different systems. Then, once the spambot has been installed onto the system, "it can start sending out more emails" to work on getting other computers to also be infected.
So, what is actually happening with the spambot? John Brandon talks about how once a spambot has infected a system, along with sending emails out to others, it also works under a "master bot." In other words, it listens to whatever information is being passed along from the creator on who or where to try to target next. Once a bot has been detected by a system and can no longer send out spam, spambots typically work on other tasks "such as traffic spoofing... or participating in a denial-of-service attack" instead. However, unlike other malware, spambots are also relatively easy to get rid of. Since spambots are normally poorly coded, updating any old anti-malware and running a few system scans can usually get rid of all of them.I really feel that this article did a good job of explaining what a spambot was to the reader. Before this article, I hardly knew much about them. However, now I not only know how they are spread, but I also understand the ideas behind them to keep spreading. The best thing for the public to be aware of is that you should never open emails from unknown senders or open unexpected attachments from people we know. Hopefully, as computer security continues to grow, we can find new and better ways to keep spambots from even breaching systems. One idea that really keeps standing out to me is the idea of behavior based anti-virus systems. If we worked with that idea to stop spambots, we could potentially stop them before they even got the ball rolling on installing the malware. The best thing for the public to do to protect against spambots for now is just to keep anti-malware systems up to date and current.
Article:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3233127/security/anatomy-of-a-spambot.html?upd=1508472294460
Picture:
https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2014/07/29/spam-bot-invaders-which-countries-send-the-most-spam-infographic/
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