[funsec] Fight! Fight!

[michael.blanchard at emc.com]

Hmmm.... it would appear that our good friends at McAfee have forgotten the definition of botnet...  let me help them out a bit....  :-)


bot·net

noun /ˈbätˌnet/ 
botnets, plural

   1. A network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge

Michael P. Blanchard
Senior Security Engineer, CISSP, GCIH, CCSA-NGX, MCSE
Office of Information Security & Risk Management
EMC ² Corporation
32 Coslin Drive
Southboro, MA 01772

-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces at linuxbox.org [mailto:funsec-bounces at linuxbox.org] On Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 3:45 PM
To: rmslade at shaw.ca
Cc: funsec at linuxbox.org
Subject: Re: [funsec] Fight! Fight!

On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:20:39 PDT, "Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" said:
> http://blogs.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/shady-rat-is-not-a-botnet

Well.. she says:

"Speaking of technical arguments, apparently Mr. Kaspersky has gotten it in his head that Shady RAT is a botnet."

And then continues with:

"that we only know of 72 companies/organizations victimized through one command & control server, out of hundreds or more used by this adversary."

OK, I'll bite, if it was a C&C server, *what do we call the thing being controlled* if it wasn't a botnet?