5 ms·

> Unlike conventional botnets, the Glupteba botnet does not rely solely on predetermined domains to ensure its survival. > Instead, when the botnet’s C2 server

> Unlike conventional botnets, the Glupteba botnet does not rely solely on predetermined domains to ensure its survival. > Instead, when the botnet’s C2 server is interrupted, Glupteba malware is hard-coded to “search” the public Bitcoin blockchain for transactions involving three specific Bitcoin addresses that are controlled by the Glupteba Enterprise. >From time to time, the Glupteba Enterprise executes transactions in those addresses, and as part of those transactions, the Glupteba Enterprise leaves in the blockchain the location of the domain for a back- up C2 Server. Nice, the faster people start treating public blockchains as pay-to-write-once, read-for-free, databases and the native cryptocurrency more like fuel for writing, the quicker this “currency” debate ends for something more intelligent and aligned with reality and the market behaviors. In before “they could have used a permissioned database”, I really can’t think of something more reliable and cheaper with assurances of availability like this

vmception 5y ago
Another use case for this method is a way for your human users to find you after you’ve been deplatformed or have no status page. Write the messages onchain to an address your users know, or with a signed message your users know to look for
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > after you’ve been deplatformed > Write the messages onchain to an address your users know Ah yes, for those fans who are literally too lazy/disinterested to leave YouTube for long enough to tap your name into Google but are motivated enough to grep the blockchain. Deplatforming has never stopped fans from finding content.
  - vmception 5y ago
    UI makes it easier, count at least you as being surprised how much messages are posted onchain and then spread across Crypto Telegram, Crypto Twitter, and then to broader news sources
seoaeu 5y ago
> I really can’t think of something more reliable and cheaper with assurances of availability like this Assurances that they only need because they're breaking the law. It is well established that blockchains are good to facilitating illegal behavior. This is just a novel way of using them for that purpose
- vmception 5y ago
  Or like just a terms of service interpretation that they didn't even know of Platformless internet, whats what people mean by web3 and I’m here for it A public utility that can just be optionally used no matter what people think of you
  - arpa 5y ago
    it once was like this already. You can spin up your site anytime. You can use tor hidden services to make yourself uncensorable. No need for crypto, pay in knowledge only. And that's why web 1.0 was superior. edit, ok, tor appeared with web2.0, but still it is more of a web 1.3.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      No you can't any visitor using chrome gives away your hidden public website. Recreating web 1.0 with todays spyware browsers requires a tor setup.
    - vmception 5y ago
      yes web 1.0 had potential but the consolidation of platforms and their protocols made it untenable ISPs can deplatform ICANN and ENOM can deplatform Nations can force them to deplatform and effectively censor your web 1.0 server can be unreachable or unable to serve data a TOR onion service is subject to the same distributed denial of service Reading from a blockchain is not, and the costs for writing to it are one-off and low
      - arpa 5y ago
chmod775 5y ago
That's quite interesting, but it's not the only decentralized network that can be used like this. You could also either create nonstandard clients for the bittorrent DHT, that just use it to find each other, or maybe just have a torrent of a list of domains that you prepared beforehand, but you only provide the next chunk of data with the next items in the list once your old ones are burned.
- vmception 5y ago
  Yes, there are more ways, what we used to do, and still in use in some communities, is to put all the other domains in the whois records on a couple website’s subdomains So we would be using DNS as the distributed storage, its in the name lol And there are also snapshots of whois record states all over the place if the records change or are hijacked. But this makes it hard to get new ones if the records cannot be updated and theyre all hijacked Writes to a blockchain are still some benefits like simply not being a domain name.
IceWreck 5y ago
> Instead, when the botnet’s C2 server is interrupted, Glupteba malware is hard-coded to “search” the public Bitcoin blockchain for transactions involving three specific Bitcoin addresses that are controlled by the Glupteba Enterprise This is genius.

vmception 5y ago

Another use case for this method is a way for your human users to find you after you’ve been deplatformed or have no status page. Write the messages onchain to an address your users know, or with a signed message your users know to look for

throwawaygh 5y ago
> after you’ve been deplatformed > Write the messages onchain to an address your users know Ah yes, for those fans who are literally too lazy/disinterested to leave YouTube for long enough to tap your name into Google but are motivated enough to grep the blockchain. Deplatforming has never stopped fans from finding content.
- vmception 5y ago
  UI makes it easier, count at least you as being surprised how much messages are posted onchain and then spread across Crypto Telegram, Crypto Twitter, and then to broader news sources

seoaeu 5y ago

> I really can’t think of something more reliable and cheaper with assurances of availability like this Assurances that they only need because they're breaking the law. It is well established that blockchains are good to facilitating illegal behavior. This is just a novel way of using them for that purpose

vmception 5y ago
Or like just a terms of service interpretation that they didn't even know of Platformless internet, whats what people mean by web3 and I’m here for it A public utility that can just be optionally used no matter what people think of you
- arpa 5y ago
  it once was like this already. You can spin up your site anytime. You can use tor hidden services to make yourself uncensorable. No need for crypto, pay in knowledge only. And that's why web 1.0 was superior. edit, ok, tor appeared with web2.0, but still it is more of a web 1.3.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    No you can't any visitor using chrome gives away your hidden public website. Recreating web 1.0 with todays spyware browsers requires a tor setup.
  - vmception 5y ago
    yes web 1.0 had potential but the consolidation of platforms and their protocols made it untenable ISPs can deplatform ICANN and ENOM can deplatform Nations can force them to deplatform and effectively censor your web 1.0 server can be unreachable or unable to serve data a TOR onion service is subject to the same distributed denial of service Reading from a blockchain is not, and the costs for writing to it are one-off and low
    - arpa 5y ago

chmod775 5y ago

That's quite interesting, but it's not the only decentralized network that can be used like this. You could also either create nonstandard clients for the bittorrent DHT, that just use it to find each other, or maybe just have a torrent of a list of domains that you prepared beforehand, but you only provide the next chunk of data with the next items in the list once your old ones are burned.

vmception 5y ago
Yes, there are more ways, what we used to do, and still in use in some communities, is to put all the other domains in the whois records on a couple website’s subdomains So we would be using DNS as the distributed storage, its in the name lol And there are also snapshots of whois record states all over the place if the records change or are hijacked. But this makes it hard to get new ones if the records cannot be updated and theyre all hijacked Writes to a blockchain are still some benefits like simply not being a domain name.

IceWreck 5y ago

> Instead, when the botnet’s C2 server is interrupted, Glupteba malware is hard-coded to “search” the public Bitcoin blockchain for transactions involving three specific Bitcoin addresses that are controlled by the Glupteba Enterprise This is genius.