Bitcoin Forum

In this thread (http://"http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=30639.0"), there is a not very clear discussion about pools and botnets traffic.
I would like to hear the different pool policies for such illegal activity, and what are they doing about that.
So I can divert my legit traffic to the pools not endorsing botnets.

AFAIK no pools endorse botnets.

We're not banning anyone without proof that it's actually a botnet tho.
I think other pools are doing the same (deepbit does warn with a huge text if account is doing suspicions activity etc), btc guild bans them as soon as detected(?).

+1

I wouldn't care if they did or didn't.  A share submitted is a share, regardless of where it came from.  I don't see why pool operators should be responsible for other people who don't secure their machines properly.

What are we going to do next, ask pool operators to reject shares because I bought my hardware with income I didn't pay taxes on? 

There's nothing wrong with that. Running a botnet, however, is quite wrong.

It's ok if you don´t care.
And if you ever run a pool, just let me know it clearly so I will not send a single share.
Pool operators need to choose it's audience, being that botnets or legit miners.

BTC Guild doesn't ban them outright, if I didn't misread the post, their account get blacklisted on the normal server IPs, and there will be a display in their account profile telling them to use an IP reserved for high count but low work return rate miners, i.e. CPU mining botnets.

I ban botnets when I have enough information about the size of the botnet and a good idea that I've obtained the complete list of their IPs.  That reserved server IP is for large scale CPU miners.  In the case of botnets, they get sent to that server as well, then filtered out once I have a solid list of all the IPs that are infected.

Eligius doesn't care to fight them. Although Luke isn't too happy about them, it seems.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=23768.msg375335#msg375335

It can be quite pointless fighting them after all. If they get pissed, instead of flooding the server with slow but legit workload, they can just set the zombies to really DDoS the server. Better to work out a compromise, everybody "win".

DDoS'ing the server just because they 'get pissed' means they are juveniles and unprofessional miners. Which in turn means they will eventually run out of proxies and keep getting blacklisted & wont be able to mine anymore.

There is no financial incentive in bringing down a pool for 'revenge', only personal petty motives

It's still very effective.

Proxys and blacklists? For a large-scale DDoS attack? Really? Do you think it's that easy? :)
We're nullrouting the subnets in BGP on larger DDoS-attacks, but afaik - we're the only pool capable of doing so.

Just a simple iptables rule and/or some kind of layer 4/7 firewall won't do shit.

A professional botnet operator in for sustainable gains isn't the worry :D
It's always the script kiddie amateurs who maybe infects his entire school while doing duty as a lab assistant or something that are worrying because they will likely lash out instead of doing the smarter thing.