Botnet rentals reveal the darker side of the cloud

Cloud computing isn’t just opening up new opportunities for legitimate organizations worldwide; it’s also proving a potential boon for cyber criminals as it inexpensively and conveniently puts disposal powerful computing resources at their fingertips, which helps them quickly and anonymously do their dirty deeds.

Among the latest examples of this unfortunate trend comes via Kaspersky Labs: The company has reported that the operators of TDSS, one of the world’s largest, most sophisticated botnets, are renting out infected computers to would-be customers through the awmproxy.net storefront. Not only has TDSS developed a convenient Firefox add-on, it’s accepting payment via PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, as well as e-currency like WebMoney and Liberty Reserve.

Also known as TDL-4, the TDSS malware employs a rootkit to infect Windows-based systems, allowing outsiders to use affected machines to anonymously surf the Web, according to Kaspersky researchers Sergey Golobanov and Igor Soumenkov. The malware also removes some 20 malicious programs from host PCs to sever communication with other bot families. (Evidently, botnet operators are becoming increasingly competitive with one another.)

According to the researchers, the operators of TDSS are effectively offering anonymous Internet access as a service for about $100 per month. “For the sake of convenience, the cyber criminals have also developed a Firefox add-on that makes it easy to toggle between proxy servers within the browser,” they reported.

According to Golovanov, once machines are infected, a component called socks.dll notifies awmproxy.net that a new proxy is available for rent. Soon after, the infected PC starts to accept proxy requests.

Notably, Kapersky does offer a utility to remove TDSS dubbed TDSSKiller.

This isn’t the first instance of an organization making expansive cloud-based systems available to potential ne’er-do-wells, though it’s arguably among the most brazen examples. Amazon Web Services have proven possible to exploit to pull off cheap brute-force attacks and could be abused for other unsavory deeds as well, such as spam propagation.

This story, “Botnet rentals reveal the darker side of the cloud,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.