The botnet is probably the critical thing. Even if the PR (or "avenge the global south", or whatever) value might not be enormous, the cost to a bad actor of having other peoples' computers do something is almost negligible.

Doesn't using your botnet expose your botnet IP addresses/devices?

Yes, but currently that has zero consequences. Say you infect 500.000 Windows XP machines or consumer routers, the owners of those devices isn't going to be informed, nor is their ISPs. In many cases the manufacturer of those devices also aren't going to provide security update, but those probably wasn't going to be applied anyway.

Are you positive that "tell nobody" is the mitigation strategy that Google used here? They could have easily asked router vendors to patch their devices, asked ISPs to blackhole those customers until they're patched, etc.

Patch what though? They know that they're getting hit with unprecedented traffic, not how those computers were infected.

It's mostly not infected computers, but rather poorly configured proxies that are open for anyone to bounce malicious traffic through. Convincing everyone to clean up their open proxies is a long-term, hard problem. But I plan to tackle it soon....

How? I suppose the most effective way is to have those proxies attack each other. But don’t, it’s likely illegal.

the most efficient way would be to write a script that gains root on those open proxies and then fixes the issue.

Effective or efficient? Would seem rather inefficient to spend time researching all the possible ways to gain route on x number of servers, finding an exploit, crafting some plan to execute it, keeping your prints clean etc etc

What way would be more efficient?

Get a few companies to agree that open proxies are a scourge that needs to be stopped. They each apply some action to open proxies (user-facing messaging, loss of functionality, captcha, or complete block), and the users of those proxies will get the problem fixed.

The hard part (and it truly is hard!) is convincing a few companies to do this. It risks user complaints in the short term, to solve a problem that may not be very acute for the largest companies (who can simply absorb these attacks).

[delayed]

So you're saying Google and Cloudflare, just as an example, should block consumers of other ISPs because they run "unpatched" software or they have malware running on their devices? Lol, this is a very absurd and narrow minded view how the internet works. You deal with the traffic, you don't randomly block eyeball networks because they're attacking you.

> you don't randomly block eyeball networks because they're attacking you.

ISPs do this literally all the time. They sell services that do this.

> the owners of those devices isn't going to be informed, nor is their ISPs

not necessarily true

But these ISPs that give something and inform and even isolate their infected customers are few and far between.

Shout out to Dutch ISP XS4ALL who was (is?) very very strict and active in this space.

Google should start using their ad network to silently update people’s security!

Uh, no thanks from this user.

Also, sounds illegal.

Definitely illegal in the US.

Anyone can claim that, there's no link to a specific actor

I'm guessing you would do this in advance - "pay attention to tech news next week - our botnet will unleash hell"

Step 1: Put message on blockchain beforehand with exact date/time and characteristics of DDoS

Step 2: Execute DDoS

Step 3: Prove to others you are responsible by using private key

There’s (as ever) no need for a blockchain, people do this with twitter and sha256 all the time. Hash the message, post the hash, wait for prediction to happen, post the full message.

Any examples of major predictions verified in this way?

And Google and Cloudflare also get good PR because how insanely good their are at deflecting those huge attacks. It's a win-win situation here... oh wait /s

(the /s is just on the "oh wait" part, not the whole post)

Why not attack a target that can actually be harmed? Are they afraid?

It's not obvious what's the value of having the largest ineffective attack.

Why not roll a couple defenseless grannies in the streets for pocket change, rather than throw rocks at the cops and then get away unscathed?

One gets you more money in the short term. The other one gets you more street cred - which gets you more money in the long term.

Well in this case it seems like they blew their "0-day" and Google worked with other providers to patch this type of attack.