An increase in attacks meant to setup high speed, public, distribution networks (pubstro) seems to be spreading. In a nutshell, this means vulnerable servers are being used as hosts for hidden ftp servers with little impact on other data that might be exposed on the host. Nothing especially new here other than the amazing efficiency of the attacks, which leads to robust “networks” of compromised systems, as well as the fact that breach laws are now in effect. The odd situation with market forces in this scenario is that attackers seem better at writing code to remotely install agents to generate revenue than many of the companies that are actually supposed to be in charge of the servers themselves. If this rate of change goes unchecked, my guess is that developers may see a more lucrative future in stealing resources than in being tasked to try and prevent them from being stolen. But who should bear the cost of the disincentives?

Some discussion on Educause suggests even fully-patched Windows 2000 systems are at risk.