Researchers at TippingPoint Technologies’ Digital Vaccine Laboratories havefound a way to infiltrate and seize control of one of the world’s largestspam-spewing botnets, a breakthrough that has ignited an intense debate overthe ethics of "cleaning" infected computers.
Cody Pierce and Pedram Amini, two high-profile software securityresearchers, cracked into the Trojan powering Kraken?a 400,000-strong botnet ofinfected computers?by reverse-engineering the encryption routines and figuringout the communication structure between the botnet owner and the hijackedcomputers.
Once they got a clear understanding of the inner workings of Kraken, the duofound that the infected computers were trying to connect to a master C&C(command and control) server by systematically generating subdomains fromvarious dynamic DNS (Domain Name System) resolver services.
Read the full article at eWEEK: Kraken Botnet Infiltration Triggers Ethics Debate
