New THOR Botnet Nearly Ready to be Sold, Price $8,000

One fresh botnet named 'Thor' is being built whose architecture is decentralized and which uses peer-to-peer technology. This botnet, understandably, is about to be complete and will soon get traded on several illegal hacking forums for $8,000, published Help Net Security dated March 6, 2012.

Notably, the term botnet is described for one network of PCs, which attackers hijack and control. The hijacking is done via a 'bot' i.e. a malware, used for infecting the computers. The bot-infected PCs then constantly exchange messages with the network's remaining infected PCs alternatively with many regulators of bots for getting the botnet-holder's commands.

Botnet purchasers can have additional modules but must pay more, the modules being a form snatcher, mass mailer, password/keylogger capturer, DDoS malware, and sophisticated bootkiller. They can as well develop more modules of personal choice.

Thor, which's one decentralized botnet based on P2P methodology, is being written in C/C++ computer program while its developer, "TheGrimReap3r" is nearing its completion for getting it sold. There's no central command-and-control system for the botnet as such, therefore it'll cause immense problem in shutting it down. For the same reason, tracing the origin of the command issuance will also be immensely hard as the network's nodes pass the commands to their next ones.

Thor is not the foremost network-of-bots that utilizes peer-to-peer communication for remaining live as also under its apt herders' control. Despite that, as lately, security agencies in collaboration with law-enforcement bodies have been increasingly shutting down botnets; builders of bot-networks are rethinking developing one which's based solely on the P2P kind of communication.

And though it's harder for destabilizing P2P botnets, they aren't impenetrable. However, that can be overcome if the peer-to-peer communication amongst all the bot-infected PCs is necessarily coded with the help of 256-AES encryption while arbitrary decoding software generation occurs during every system-boot.

This way more income can be earned, says Herkanaidu, according to whom, botnet-creators have the choice of utilizing it themselves alternately hiring it out for myriad purposes. However, incase an extremely stable platform is possible to offer then they can demand an even higher price, the expert analyzes.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/14/2012