By Security of personal PCs and the Internet in general is a very important thing to worry about and it is also a several billion dollar industry.
This industry is constantly toiling at our safety so we don’t have to. Trouble is that recently, as part of their ongoing investigations, they uncovered a very special botnet, one called TDL-4.
A botnet is a network of computers that have been infected and can be used remotely by hackers in order to carry out various attacks.
Botnet illustration
Botnets are nothing new to the world, but TDL-4 is a very special one. According to statements from some of the most important names in online security, TDL-4 is almost indestructible.
Some of the security advocates actually claim that TDL-4 is indestructible whereas others refrain from being so definite at the moment. It seems like whoever is behind TDL-4 created an incredibly complex and detailed code which enables it to defend itself against anti-virus companies and competitor hackers and cyber-criminals alike.
That is quite the deadly combination and it has been giving industry heavy weights such as Kaspersky a very difficult time. Part of the very resilient armor of the TDL-4 botnet is how the creators came up with their own encryption code.
The overall effects of the excellent craftsmanship behind TDL-4 means that most antivirus and security suits stand impotently by while with over 4.5 million PCs were infected in just three months and that’s a number that keeps on growing.
Infection on computers is established by tackling a PC’s hard drive at the critical spot, the MBR. The Master Boot Record is a place that’s inaccessible to most safety solutions as apart from being rather difficult to reach it is part of the critical functionality of operating systems.
Internet security
A little bit of hope on taking down TDL-4 comes from the same people who discovered it in the first place and who claim it is almost indestructible. According to some of Kaspersky’s researchers the inner complexity of the botnet’s code is what makes it vulnerable.
With some very careful observation and consideration they’ve managed to find a few errors in the code TDL-4 relies on. These vulnerabilities could be exploited towards finally destroying the indestructible.
All I can say in relation to TDL-4 is that I hope they take it down before it ends up growing into something like Skynet and the whole Terminator saga becomes a reality.