The White Knights of the Internet: Hackers Using a Botnet to Protect Your Router

Many times the word “hacker” is associated with a pejorative meaning when relating it to cybercrime activities. Although a computer criminal is really a hacker, since he has the capabilities and tools to manipulate computer systems, computers and networks with the intention of causing damage or committing crimes, there are also hackers looking for the exact opposite. These “WhiteHat hackers” have already taken action to protect home routers threats in the network, but now they want to spread their good deeds much more.

A few days ago we were talking about a Anonymous “attack” on a botnet infected by the Dridex Trojan, with which it had been possible to modify this computer network used to carry out DDoS attacks, theft of private or financial information. On that occasion, part of the malware had been replaced by the Avira antivirus software installer with which to protect computer equipment. Now, history repeats itself, but this time it is intended to protect 200,000 home routers from the clutches of dangerous hackers.

This kind of white knights of the Internet have already been baptized as WhiteHat hackers and last year we told you how this group had responded to the Lizard Squad hackers, developing a malware that instead of infecting computers, eliminated the vulnerabilities of the routers. Although according to data from the security company Symantec, this software had been introduced in up to 70,000 devices, now it is wanted try to protect the nearly 200,000 routers that the botnet created by the Lizard Squad would be under a yoke.

A botnet to detect vulnerabilities in routers

For this they will again serve as your own botnet through which to distribute the software that protects against the use of insecure passwords in routers, corrupted DNS, the existence of back doors through which to access the device (backdoors) and the deactivation of protection firewalls.

• IT security forum

Forbes magazine has received by encrypted mail the confirmation of a member of these white knights of the network, that they want use the 60,000 or so nodes that they have controlled to reach hundreds of thousands of routers to be able to remove all threats remotely and help users to be more protected against external attackers. However, the help of these hackers must always be complemented with the own security measures adopted by the users, since they are in charge of putting the first defense barriers against viruses and computer attacks.

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