13. September 2012 · Comments Off on The story behind the Microsoft Nitol Botnet takedown · Categories: blog · Tags: , , , , , , ,

Earlier today Microsoft announced the takedown of the Nitol botnet and takeover of the 3322.org domain. However, if you are using the Damballa flow-based Detection Control, this was a non-event. Full disclosure – Cymbel partners with Damballa.

Gunter Ollman, Damballa’s CTO, today commented on Nitol and 3322.org, and the ramifications of the Microsoft takedown, which I will summarize.

First, Damballa has been tracking Nitol and the other 70 or so botnets leveraging 3322.org for quite some time. Therefore, as a Damballa user, any device on your network infected with Nitol, or the other 70 botnets leveraging 3322.org, would be identified by Damballa. Furthermore, if you were using Damballa’s blocking capabilities, those devices would be prevented from communicating with their malware’s Command & Control (C&C) servers.

Second, most of these 70+ botnets make use of “multiple C&C domain names distributed over multiple DNS providers. Botnet operators are only too aware of domain takedown orders from law enforcement, so they add a few layers of resilience to their C&C infrastructure to protect against that kind of disruption.” Therefore this takedown did not kill these botnets.

In closing, while botnet and DNS provider takedowns are interesting, they simply do not reduce an organization’s risk of data breaches. Damballa does!!