by Rob Douglas

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) recently met for the third time this year and is reporting progress in the ongoing battle against botnets.  A MAAWG release this week, Industry Takes on Botnets, Other Issues at MAAWG Meeting Focus on Cooperative Efforts to Protect Users’ Online Experience, stated that “the new work represents important steps forward in cooperative industry efforts to protect end-users by addressing the safe mitigation of botnets, ISP migration to IPv6, detection and reporting of compromised hosts, Web messaging abuse and other outbound abuse.”

In describing the role of botnets when it comes to identity theft, MAAWG stated:

“Bots” and “zombies” are computers infected with malicious code spread via contaminated emails, instant messages or Web sites and installed without the user’s permission. The bots often are coordinated into covert networks used to send spam, or “botnets” that can entail hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting computers. Users with polluted machines are generally unaware their systems are sending the abusive email, and among other threats, the malware might also capture users’ sensitive information for use by identity thieves.

Specifically, as a result of the latest meeting, MAAWG is forming:

• A botnet mitigation subcommittee that will develop best practices to safely remove malware from unsuspecting users’ computers
• A subcommittee reviewing a novel method by which senders of solicited bulk email can detect that individual subscribers may have been infected by malware, and automatically report their suspicion to that subscriber’s ISP
• An IPv6 and botnets subcommittee researching how IPv6 will impact botnet detection
• A migrating to IPv6 subcommittee developing best practices for upgrading a messaging infrastructure
• New working groups formed to address security issues in Web messaging and other outbound abuse
• In addition, domain registrars are invited to comment on the current Registrars best practices draft by contacting MAAWG through its Web site: www.MAAWG.org

Industry created associations like MAAWG play an important and fundamental role in the fight against cybercrime.  It’s promising to see the progress MAAWG is achieving.

Botnets / Zombies and their BotHerder Master