Re: [nanog] Re: Over a decade of DDOS--any progress yet?

[Aaron Peterson <aaron_peterson () harvard edu>]

Hello:

On 12/8/10 10:43 AM, JC Dill wrote:
>  On 08/12/10 4:28 AM, Arturo Servin wrote:
> >     One big problem (IMHO) of DDoS is that sources (the host of 
> > botnets) may be completely unaware that they are part of a DDoS. I do 
> > not mean the bot machine, I mean the ISP connecting those.
>
> ISPs are not the source.  The source is Microsoft.  The source is 
> their buggy OS that is easily compromised to enable the computers to 
> be taken over as part of the botnet.

Many third party vendors like Adobe, Sun and others are just as culpable 
in this sense, if not more.  A large majority of the vulnerabilities 
leveraged to deploy modern malware / botnets come from these client-side 
applications (e.g. flash, reader, java, etc) and not the OS 
specifically.  It's beyond the point that we can blame just Microsoft.  
Yes, they can get better, but they've actually made great strides in 
software security in the last few years.  Now that the other vendors are 
starting to feel the pain, hopefully they'll start to follow suit.


Aaron