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Researchers uncover Tor-powered Skynet botnet (net-security.org)

63 points by pjonesdotca ↗ HN
Rapid7 researchers have recently unearthed an unusual piece of malware that turned out to be crucial to the formation of an elusive botnet - dubbed Skynet by the researchers - whose existence has been documented in a very popular Reddit "I Am A" thread.

9 comments

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xSwag
What? Using tor to run botnets is nothing new[1]

Edit: Apparently it's the same guy...[2]

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/sq7cy/iama_a_malware_c...

[2] http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/tor-powered-botnet-linked-...

runjake
This is why it's helpful to read the link before commenting. This fact is mentioned in the very first sentence of the article.

Edit: The article wasn't changed. The first sentence was there in the original the whole time. The commenter just didn't read the article well enough.

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(comment deleted)
Aco-
buzzwords get
alexhawdon
Skynet is the name of a military (leased by them, anyway) satellite communications network used (amongst other things, I believe) to remotely control drones around the world. A naming choice that shows its owners, whilst being engaged in a deadly serious business, aren't completely without a sense of humour...
marshray
Most folks associate it with the movie series Terminator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29 : Skynet is a fictional, self-aware artificial intelligence system which features centrally in the Terminator franchise and serves as the franchise's main antagonist ... with its ultimate goal the extinction of the human race ... Skynet was [originally] a computer system developed for the U.S. military by the defense firm Cyberdyne Systems.

EDIT: whoosh

ryusage
That's where the "sense of humor" comment comes in.