this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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There are plenty of use cases for going after self hosters. Bot farms are basically made up of “regular” computers infected with malware.
While you’re at it and have access to tens of thousands computers, also grabbing their passwords is just a nice bonus.
If anything, it doesn’t make financial sense not to do it. You’re right in that self hosters themselves are not the target per se. but they are targeted for other reasons, and that’s where it ends up becoming problematic.
You need to aumatize any operation... It's not conceivable that an human look at every device for stuff to steal. It would be even more expensive.
Generally all these bit malware do is 1) using a vulnerability to replicate themselves 2) mine crypto or other kind of crap. Sometimes (1) involves also stealing ssh keys but it's not the goal, it the mean.
Self hosting password/code/photos/whatever niches you are almost guaranteed that no human will look at hit because the amount of IoT/Routers/etc with nothing valuable beyond themselves generally composes the majority of these compromised bots
This is just the economic incentive
Oh yes, because automating a search for csv and json files to search for mail addresses and passwords can’t be done by malware. It must be a human.
Common. This happens on massive scale, wether you like it or not.
https://securityboulevard.com/2023/06/the-alarming-reality-the-extent-of-credentials-stolen-by-botnets/amp/
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/452972-password-cracker-software-creates-crypto-stealing-botnets.html/amp
https://phys.org/news/2013-12-stolen-credentials-million-compromised-accounts.amp
It's software, everything can be done. Even if username and passwords are not kept in plaintext as you suggest (and likely nobody would do)
Problem is that the number of people that self host password repositories is so little that it makes no financial sense. And so for this reason your "massive scale" is an hyperbole because there isn't a massive scale of people that self host password repositories
Botnets that stole from local password repositories makes more sense because there are more people that use password managers of sort.
Humans looking are flexible enough to look at all possible long tail cases like this.. but not going to happen except for high profile targets.
All in all what i am saying is that i don't see clear evidence that self hosting is more dangerous (in practice) than centralized hosting
PS: pro tip If you link references, make sure to read the references you link... The second one has nothing to do with password stealing, it was about a password cracker that was a trojan horse for a botnet. Yes, it fits the search "botnet password" but it doesn't sustain your point