Botnet Operations: Running a Campaign

"One bullet, one kill" - isn't that some kind of sniper saying from the movies? If you're a professional botnet operator you're not going to want to loose control of your favorite botnet just because some damned whitehat managed to take down a single command and control (CnC) server.

With that in mind, you're also probably not going to want to build your botnet in a way that its growth is reliant upon a single infection vector or content distribution vehicle. The solution nowadays lies with the strategy of running multiple campaigns against your targets.

Just as political contenders running for office unleash a barrage of sophisticated and targeted campaigns to draw in supporters, professional botnet builders similarly unleash their own barrage of targeted campaigns - looking to sucker en mass their victims.

To understand botnet building campaigns a little better, I've thrown up a blog on the topic over at the Damballa site - Botnet Building Campaigns.

"I ? Blogging + Tweeting" Add a twitter widget to your craft blog

If you are looking for a way to increase your twitter followers and keep your sidebars full of interesting content then you need to add a twitter widget to your blog - live updates from you, your lists, your favourites or just your favourite subject!

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Great Expectations - Follow on Twitter

I've been writing blog critiques for some brave bloggers who have submitted their blog links for me to come up with some constructive ideas to improve their blogs.  I've been offering these freebie craft blog crits on the CBuk forum as they give me so many great ideas for the tips that crafters need to make their blogs a real success - thanks for all the submissions so far.

I wrote this on a craft blog critique the other day, for a lady who sells her own handmade bags.

"...maybe you need to keep people there by having more content about handbags - perhaps create a twitter list of handbag experts / fashionistas and just contain a post a week on purely handbag news taken from your favourite tweets of the week (use the favourite button on twitter - you can create a widget from this too) this will also have the effect of drawing your blog to the attention of some bigger names in fashion - you may even get some links back which will be excellent for your search engine rankings - you can then link to these very specific posts in your sidebar or via a static page.

The blogger in question was concerned about her high bounce rate and the short time visitors to her blog about her handmade business were staying. My advice to her should help in a number of ways.

1. Posts about experts in your field make a blog rich with keywords - This is excellent for google search engine bots to find your craft site and will result in pushing page rankings up in general.  
2. Using a twitter search (check here for how to get a really well defined search) will help you identify the latest trends and keep your blog posts fresh - just one really keyword packed post as often as you can will help your blog get read by your target audience!
3. Having a twitter gadget will enliven your blog - why? Because they're live! - and it doesn't have to be your own tweets! Choose tweets from the niche groups in your industry or pick favourite tweets to display that show you know your craft.
4. I have created a list of UK Handmade Bloggers and I display the live feed from them proudly at the top of this blog, everybody loves a bit of free publicity. Displaying others tweets will result in more followers for them but also more followers for your list and of course in turn, more followers for you! 

Raku Buttons, Jude Allman

Twitter Widgets - Live streams from twitter on your blog

I have copied and pasted everything in this blue box from twitters own page because they say it so succinctly, please visit and create your own amazing twitter widgets - http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets

Profile Widget

Display your most recent Twitter updates on any webpage.

Search Widget

Displays search results in real time! Ideal for live events, broadcastings, conferences, TV Shows, or even just keeping up with the news.

Faves Widget

Show off your favorite tweets! Also in real time, this widget will pull in the tweets you've starred as favorites. It's great for moderation.

List Widget

Put your favorite tweeps into a list! Then show 'em off in a widget. Also great for moderation.

I have added a screen shot below from one of my own twitter widgets, which has a list of any tweets that mention CraftblogUK or the hashtag #CBuk - remember you can add as many of these live streams from twitter as you like!  Notice you can either copy and paste the code as a "3rd party content" gadget or just click on the "add to blogger button" which makes this so easy!

Use the auto width selection that way you can move your gadget around  your blog and it will always fit in. Make sure you pick some colours that suit your blog. I've tweaked the code so that I have a clickable link to follow in the text at the top, I'll add a tutorial on how to do that soon as it's really simple to add a few extras to the code.

I would really appreciate your comments on this subject - twitter is a subject I really love talking about! 

Also do let me know if you have created a new twitter list - your comment links are live as I am using the Disqus comment system, so people will be able to click through direct from this post and follow your new list (instructions on how to create a list in this post of mine from my haptree blog)

Centralise your Sidebars

Have you got awards, badges and buttons and widgets of all differents shapes and sizes in your blog sidebars? This is a very easy and quick tutorial that has great results on the overall appearance of your blog.

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I have been offering blog critiques over at the new Craft Blog UK Forum and so far people seem to have been really appreciating my feedback!  Here is the link in case you would like to join up and maybe ask for a critique of your own blog! Craft Blog UK Forum 

It was during writing the feedback for these blogs that I realised this was such a common issue on blogs, I wrote a post on this last year on my personal blog as I had masses of bits and pieces in the sidebars that began to look very untidy, such as awards, shop badges and the buttons you have to add on from blog directories.

Tutorial - Centralise your Sidebar widgets and Badges

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Open up the gadget/widget in your blog layout section or directly from your blog if you have the editing mode (little tools crossed over beside each gadget)

Before all of the html text write <center> and afterwards write </center>  (american spelling)

Click save and you're done.  This works with every gadget where you have added 3rd party html code.

Thanks,  I look forward to seeing you over at the forum for more blog talk!

Opt-in Botnets

As businesses and governments have moved their presence online, protesting and other public forms of disaffection against them have followed. Growing numbers of people have been motivated to take up the cyber-equivalents of protest placards, highway sit-downs and Molotov cocktails.

The last few years have shown a steady increase in the sophistication of the tools and tactics the disaffected use online. Social networking applications, Web 2.0 technologies and the general availability of what can best be described as �military grade� cyber attack tools make it a trivial task for protestors to launch crippling attacks from anywhere around the world.

The massive adoption of social networking portals and micro-blogging services in turn created a new generation of centralized Command-and-Control (CnC) capabilities that quickly and easily organize protests for international participants from all walks of life. The simplicity with which these technologies can be leveraged for attack coordination against governments and commercial organizations cannot be underestimated.

A second generation of cyber-protesting tools has emerged, encompassing a disturbing blend of criminal technology and activist enthusiasm. A growing number of movements are asking their members to deliberately install botnets on their hosts and within their networks in order to participate in more sophisticated and effecting cyber-protests.

Botnets have always been considered a severe threat that removes PCs and servers from IT control. However, botnet compromises have always come from the accidental and unknowing installation of bot malware. The purposeful and intentional acceptance of bot malware, however laudable the cause, presents a dangerous challenge to any organization concerned about maintaining control over network assets and demonstrating proper fiduciary responsibility.

In short, the introduction of social networking CnC and an increasingly diverse range of motivations and common-cause group memberships is opening the doors to new cyber-protesting possibilities � and to criminal misappropriation of hacktivist botnets. This whitepaper examines the evolutionary path of opt-in botnets, including how tactics have changed, why anyone would willingly choose to join a botnet, and what activist botnets mean to organizations that find themselves both victims and enablers of a botnet-driven attack.

Craft Blog UK Forum

Are you looking for a new place to promote your blog?

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I have just launched a new forum on Craft Blog UK for craft bloggers to discuss and promote their craft blogs.  As the community here at CBuk grows I hope that it will become an interesting place to find answers to blogging questions and promote your craft blog posts and giveaways - a way for us all to help each other get the most out of blogging.

 

Please take a look around the forum and join up if you would like to add to the discussions or add some topics and questions of your own.  I'll be visiting regularly and so there should always be at least me on hand to help!  So far I have added two areas to post topics in, an area for general chat and promotion and an area for asking for help with blogging.  This forum is all about blogs so please feel free to add your links to as many posts as possible! (Links from relevant sites like this can be an excellent way of boosting your search engine rankings too!)

Hopefully we can have some interesting chats! Forums inevitably take time to develop but fingers crossed with your support it will be a success.  I'll be promoting it as much as I can, it would be great if you could help by tweeting or facebooking this link - http://craftbloguk.dailyforum.net

Topics so far are -

• Introduce Yourself
• Promotion, where, when, how?
• Have you blogged today?
• Misi Mondays
• Folksy Fridays
• Blog Giveaways
• Critique my Craft Blog
   

So if you are looking for a new place to add your links or maybe you would like a blog critique - then please join up! 

You just need to click on  register in the top right corner, or follow this link to join the CBuk Forum you can then use the 'use control panel' near to top left in order to add your avatar, post a signiture and change any other account settings. Please ask if you have any queries!

IBM Mulai Kembangkan Sayap

IBM mulai melebarkan sayapnya di Indonesia. Sejak 73 tahun kehadiran IBM di Indonesia, mereka lebih banyak berkonsentrasi di wilayah Jakarta. Tahun ini, IBM berencana untuk melakukan ekspansi geografis di luar wilayah Jakarta, yaitu Surabaya, Medan, dan Makassar.

IBM memiliki begitu banyak Business Partner yang tersebar di seluruh wilayah Indonesia. Biasanya, bisnis di luar Jakarta ditangani oleh para Business Partner tersebut.

Dengan dibukanya kantor cabang di tiga kota besar tersebut, IBM mengharapkan dapat memperoleh pasar yang lebih besar lagi. Potensi pasar di luar kota metropolitan sebenarnya cukup besar. Di wilayah ASEAN terdapat 50% potensi pasar di luar kota metropolitan. Sedangkan untuk Indonesia, terdapat 30% potensi pasar. Potensi di luar ibukota metropolitan Jakarta memang cukup besar.

Pihak IBM pun merasa optimis dengan ekspansi geografis ini. Hal tersebut terbukti dari target pertumbuhan pendapatan mereka yang diharapkan dapat mencapai double digit.

Ada tiga faktor yang mendorong bisnis IBM, yaitu kebutuhan dari perusahaan skala besar, skala menengah, dan beberapa sektor lainnya, seperti pemerintahan, perbankan, asuransi, dan lain-lain.

IBM membagi bisnisnya menjadi tiga bagian, yaitu sektor UKM (jumlah karyawan hingga 100 orang), kelas menengah (100 orang karyawan hingga 1000 karyawan), dan kelas enterprise (lebih dari 1000 orang).

IBM akan segera memulai ekspansi geografisnya. Mereka juga mulai memberi perhatian ke pasar UKM dan menengah. Pasar tersebut menjadi target mereka karena pertumbuhannya yang luar biasa.

Sumber : http://chip.co.id

Blogger in Draft - Template Designer, customise your blog with no html!

Are you looking for a really simple way to customise your blog template, with no html whatsoever? 3 Columns, footers, double sidebars...  read on!

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This video says it all! Find all the details on the official 'blogger in draft' blog.

I'm afraid that if you already have customisations on your blog then you will find some parts of this are innaccesible - it will give you the option to remove any customisations, such as your link bar.  My advice is to download your exsisting template (in Layout, then click html tab and save template) before you start playing around just in case you aren't happy with the new template.   It seems from comments on the blog that there are a number of bugs showing up already - I'm sure these will be ironed out soon but it's worth keeping a copy of your old template safe! To access blogger in draft use this link - http://draft.blogger.com/home 

I hope you have fun customising and updating your blogs.