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Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:38 am
by chump
Who's google[bot]?

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:29 pm
by crikkett
Bot=robot.
Google [bot] and Yahoo [bot] are web spiders, indexing this board.

When they're here, they're listed at the bottom of the screen in the "Who's online" box.

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 6:44 pm
by chump
crikkett wrote:Bot=robot.
Google [bot] and Yahoo [bot] are web spiders, indexing this board.

When they're here, they're listed at the bottom of the screen in the "Who's online" box.

Okay, I appreciate that. But, suddenly I feel like the slow kid in class. I looked web spiders up on google and it didn't immediately direct me to an description of what they do, and why? :shrug:

Are they downloading off of this sight, for what? Do we know?

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:04 pm
by Maddy
Web crawler

A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms[1] or Web spider, Web robot, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutter[2].

This process is called Web crawling or spidering. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a Web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).


Echelon Capital Corp (ECO/P) Interim Report

... Using web crawler technology, proprietary tracking systems and an experienced
document acquisition team, we are able to update 90% of the documents in our collection on the
same day they are made publicly available. For certain emerging market companies, it may take 3-
5 days to source the document.

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:33 pm
by Cordelia
^^Thanks Maddy.

I'm seeing them almost every time I check the site. Creepy crawlers.

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 12:29 am
by chump
I thnk I get it? :shock: So, can we speculate on what kind of info those clever rascals are collecting here? E-mail addresses? :?

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:04 am
by DeltaDawn
Good question chump, just know since I've joined RI, have many more emails than before..and most of them have the < before them like a topic reply to here.....Odd, but I don't open anything unless I recognize addy any way, so guess I'm just bitchin to bitch????? Sorry, every once in awhile, it just Feels Good!!!

Peace

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:27 am
by chump
DeltaDawn wrote:Good question chump, just know since I've joined RI, have many more emails than before..and most of them have the < before them like a topic reply to here.....Odd, but I don't open anything unless I recognize addy any way, so guess I'm just bitchin to bitch????? Sorry, every once in awhile, it just Feels Good!!!

Peace


First of all, thanks for trying to answer my question. But, I am still a little baffled. You are getting more e-mails from who? Are these unwanted or harrassment or downloading crap onto your computer type e-mails; perhaps made to look like they are coming from somewhere they are not? (Knock on wood) I haven't had these problems (I don't think), but I would kind of like to know what to look for.

Also, might they be collecting e-mails when you click on certains links that might be posted?

Thanks again, everybody
Peace

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:16 am
by Joe Hillshoist
They are part of the way a search engine functions chump.

Those bots are everywhere, well in a lot of places (there's one in my beard now - out! out! damn bot), if they weren't how could google be your friend?

The wiki page on search engines explains how they work, I'm assuming its accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 8:38 am
by DeltaDawn
Thanks for pointing out the obvious chump (a duh moment here)....think ur right, they probably do come through the links, I've been doing more reading here and getting more and more emails....Can't really say where they are coming from lol, because I don't open them, but figure they are trying to sell me something and know one of them is a dating service because of subject line. Wish I knew enough about technology to understand how they get email addys....those wretched bots!! LOL

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:32 am
by Maddy
The same way the phone solicitors get our numbers and harrass us for no particular reason! >.<

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 12:04 pm
by crikkett
DeltaDawn wrote:Thanks for pointing out the obvious chump (a duh moment here)....think ur right, they probably do come through the links, I've been doing more reading here and getting more and more emails....Can't really say where they are coming from lol, because I don't open them, but figure they are trying to sell me something and know one of them is a dating service because of subject line. Wish I knew enough about technology to understand how they get email addys....those wretched bots!! LOL

The bots are indexing our posts...the things that real people can view on this board without logging in. They can't collect our email addresses because that isn't made public. That's hidden in the back-end database of this site.

So the only way a bot could get your email address from this site is if you put it in one of your posts, which is discouraged.

But because this site is indexed by Google and Yahoo, whatever you write here could, practically speaking, be looked up on Google, and read by your mother-in-law or your boss.

That's why this thread was started, to warn you not to put information here that can personally identify you.

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:51 am
by chump
I'm not sure if this is relevant here or not; not neccesarily this particular operation, but the concept.

Authorities bust 3 in infection of 13M computers

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – Tue Mar 2, 2:26 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Authorities have smashed one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The "botnet" of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

Spanish authorities have planned a news conference for Wednesday in Madrid.

The arrests are significant because the masterminds behind the biggest botnets aren't often taken down. And the story of investigators' hunt for them offers a rare glimpse at the tactics used to trace the origin of computer crimes.

Also, the suspects go against the stereotype of genius programmers often associated with cyber crime. The suspects weren't brilliant hackers but had underworld contacts who helped them build and operate the botnet, Cesar Lorenza, a captain with Spain's Guardia Civil, which is investigating the case, told The Associated Press.

Investigators were examining bank records and seized computers to determine how much money the criminals made.

"They're not like these people from the Russian mafia or Eastern European mafia who like to have sports cars and good watches and good suits — the most frightening thing is they are normal people who are earning a lot of money with cybercrime," Lorenza said.

The three suspects were described as Spanish citizens with no criminal records. They weren't named and their mug shots weren't released, which Lorenza said is standard in Spain to protect the privacy of defendants. They face up to six years in prison if convicted of hacking charges.

Authorities identified them by their Internet handles and their ages: "netkairo," 31; "jonyloleante," 30; and "ostiator," 25.

Botnets are networks of infected PCs that have been hijacked from their owners, often without their knowledge, and put into the control of criminals. Linked together, the machines supply an enormous amount of computing power to spammers, identity thieves, and Internet attackers.

The Mariposa botnet, which has been dismantled, was easily one of the world's biggest. It spread to more than 190 countries, according to researchers. It also appears to be far more sophisticated than the botnet that was used to hack into Google Inc. and other companies in the attack that led Google to threaten to pull out of China.

The researchers that helped take down Mariposa first started looking at it in the spring of 2009.

Chris Davis, CEO of Ottawa-based Defence Intelligence, said he noticed the infections when they appeared on networks of some of his firm's clients, including pharmaceutical companies and banks.

It wasn't until several months later that he realized the infections were part of something much bigger.

After seeing that some of the servers used to control computers in the botnet were located in Spain, Davis and researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center joined with software firm Panda Security, which is headquartered in Bilbao, Spain.

The investigators caught a few lucky breaks. For one, the suspects used Internet services that wound up cooperating with investigators. That isn't always the case.

Critically, one suspect also made direct connections from his own computer to try and reclaim control of his botnet after authorities took it down around Christmas. Investigators were able to identify him based on that traffic. They were able to back up their claims with records from domains he registered where he would eventually host malicious content.

It turned out that the botnet runners had infected computers by instant-messaging malicious links to contacts on infected computers. They also got viruses onto removable thumb drives and through peer-to-peer networks. The program used to create the botnet was known as Mariposa, from the Spanish word for "butterfly."

"I don't think there's anything about this guy that makes him smarter than any of the other botnet guys, but the (Mariposa) software, it's very professional, it's very effective," said Pedro Bustamante, senior research adviser with Panda Security. "It came alive and started spreading and it got bigger than him."

While arrests of people accused of running smaller botnets are fairly common, the biggest botnet leaders are rarely nabbed. That's partly because it's easy for criminals to hide their identities by disguising the source of their Internet traffic. Often, every computing resource they use is stolen.

For instance, there have been no busts yet in the spread of the Conficker worm, which infected 3 million to 12 million PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and caused widespread fear that it could be used as a kind of Internet super weapon. The Conficker botnet is still active, but is closely watched by security researchers. The infected computers have so far been used to make money in ordinary ways, pumping out spam and spreading fake antivirus software.

Re:

PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:43 pm
by Peregrine
Et in Arcadia ego wrote:FWIW, I'm aware of the persons you chatted with, and I don't particularly think they are involved.


I was thinking about this yesterday... as the folks I was chatting with were through pm. Can the admins & mods actually see our PMs? Just curious...

Re: Important message regarding personal information

PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:53 pm
by barracuda
No. Et was referring to the RI chat room, I believe.