“Carpet Bombing” in the 21st Century – via BotNets?

Carpet Bomb: bomb a large area systematically and extensively; “The U.S. decided to carpet bomb Vietnam”

Botnet: Botnet is a term formed from two words – Robot and Network. A Bot, sometimes referred to as a Zombie, is a computer that has been infected with malware that allows a remote malicious user to access the computer. With that remote access, the malicious user can control and harness the power of all such Bots into a powerful network used for criminal activity.

Botnets have been used for sending spam remotely, intalling more malware without consent, and other illicit purposes.

Ft. Hard Knox has been inundated with some sort of botnet activity, lately. We keep receiving “comments” on our older posts from urls that are simply a series of numbers and letters, and the comment is that same number and letter. Fortunately, we have a pretty good spam filter. Unfortunately, the increase security is holding a lot of our legitimate commenters’ comments for approval (we apologize for that inconvenience). The purpose of these botnets is to manage to get an “approved comment” on our blog. Many blogs require a user to have an “approved comment” prior to allowing that commenter to leave comments without approval in the future. So, the reasoning is that if they can get an “approved comment” on an older post, then they will be able to spam our readers on current posts, without having their “comments” held for approval. Fortunately, we’ve been able to stay ahead of them.

So, botnets can be used for all sorts of negative purposes, from dangerous to annoying. But what if a botnet could be used for something good?

COL. Charles W. Williamson III makes the case for Carpet bombing in cyberspace: Why America needs a military botnet:

The world has abandoned a fortress mentality in the real world, and we need to move beyond it in cyberspace. America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.

America faces increasingly sophisticated threats against its military and civilian cyberspace. At the same time, America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere. Worse, our defensive concept is fundamentally flawed, and we have not learned the simplest lessons of history.

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The U.S. would not, and need not, infect unwitting computers as zombies. We can build enough power over time from our own resources.

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The days of the fortress are gone, even in cyberspace. While America must harden itself in cyberspace, we cannot afford to let adversaries maneuver in that domain uncontested. The af.mil botnet brings the capability to help defeat an enemy attack or hit him before he hits our shores.

Interesting idea. Read more, in the Armed Forces Journal.