DDoS botnets are diversifying: now they attack food industry

Food industry is being attacked by a new family of malware agents, reports a DDoS security solutions provider. Some versions of the Darkshell botnet agent, circulating in China, turn Windows based PCs into attack drones. Infected machines phone to command and control nodes for instructions, periodically receiving instructions on sites to invade with junk traffic.

The cybercrime network has been traced by Arbor Networks for the last three months. The security solutions provider says that Darkshell botnets have launched DDoS attacks against 97 unique victims, mostly in China (65) and the United States (23).

While among the victims there were online merchants of baby products and jewellery as well as video game related sites, main focus was on the websites of small manufacturers of industrial food processing equipment and machinery.

"We have logged attacks against at least 16 such victims emanating from the Darkshell botnets, comprising approximately 40 per cent of the victims that we sampled," Arbor security analyst Jeff Edwards reports.

"One can only speculate on the reasons for this aggressive focus on such a relatively tiny niche within the online landscape. Several such attacks have been sustained for over 60 hours at a time, and most of these equipment vendors have suffered multiple repeat attacks during this interval of time."

Even more curiously, the attacks seem to focus on three or four URLs on a targeted website that refer to specific products. "We have also observed instances in which multiple Darkshell botnets engaged in coordinated attacks against a single victim (again, vendors of industrial food processing equipment)," said Arbor.