That's One Well-Armed Child

High-level hacker code has leaked to the general public:

Carberp, as the botnet-creation toolkit is known, previously sold in underground crime forums for as much as $40,000 a license. In the last week, source code for the crimeware began circulating online for free and can now be acquired by many people who have a few hours to poke around. While the leak is a boon for researchers who want to know as much as possible about the inner workings of sophisticated malware, it also comes with a dark side: it isn’t that hard for malware newcomers to get their hands on the 1.88 GB package of code.

“In short, it does not take a genius to get a copy of the leaked source code, which makes this whole thing dangerous,” Christopher Elisan, principal malware scientist in security firm RSA’s FirstWatch department, wrote in a blog post published Friday. “Any script kiddie, who probably does not understand the technology, can use this which may result in dire consequences. It’s like handing a bazooka to a child.”

Whatever you’re doing to secure your system, it isn’t enough.