SystemBC Botnet Hits 1,500 VPS Servers — What Cloud Teams Must Do Now By CyberDudeBivash • Last updated: 22 September 2025 (IST)

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Executive Snapshot

  • Scale & makeup: Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs reports >80 C2 servers powering ~1,500 active bots daily, and nearly 80% of victims are commercial VPS hosts from major providers. ~40% of infections persist 31+ days—unusually long for botnets. Lumen Blog

  • Abuse pattern: Hijacked VPS nodes are used as high-bandwidth proxies feeding services like REM Proxy, which also markets a pool of ~20,000 MikroTik routers; researchers link usage to ransomware pipelines (e.g., Morpheus, AvosLocker). Lumen Blog

  • Why it sticks: Compromised VPS often show dozens of unpatched CVEs—on average ~20 per host, with at least one critical; one observed server had 160+ unpatched CVEs. Lumen Blog

  • Independent coverage: BleepingComputer and The Hacker News corroborate the 1,500-bot, 80%-VPS, 31+ day details and the REM Proxy tie-in. BleepingComputer+1

What SystemBC Is Doing

SystemBC is proxy malware: once it lands on a server, it turns that host into a traffic relay for other criminals (phishing, brute-force, spam, data staging). The latest reporting shows operators favoring VPS over home devices because servers offer fatter pipes, steadier uptime, and fewer user complaints. Lumen even observed multi-GB daily traffic per node—operators prioritize volume over stealth and accept fast blacklisting. Lumen Blog

Key 2025 telemetry (Lumen):

  • >80 C2s, single AS cluster;

  • ~1,500 bots daily (around 80% VPS);

  • ~40% infections last 31+ days;

  • 300 bots overlap with the GoBrut brute-force botnet. Lumen Blog

Media and industry summaries echo these findings and emphasize the elevated risk to cloud tenants and hosting providers. BleepingComputer+1

Who’s At Risk (and Why)

  • Cloud/VPS tenants: Public-facing VMs with weak patch hygiene or default creds become crime relays—hurting your brand, burning your ASN reputation, and inviting provider sanctions. Lumen Blog

  • Hosting & MSPs: Abuse erodes IP reputation, triggers law-enforcement & anti-abuse attention, and impacts clean tenants sharing ranges.

  • Enterprises: Even if you don’t run VPS, your services are attacked through these proxies; blocklists help but lag automation speed. Lumen Blog

90-Minute Playbook (Do This First)

1) Find and isolate infected VPS fast

  • Query flow logs/NetFlow for sustained outbound spikes (multi-GB/day) to unfamiliar high-numbered ports, then pivot to process and parent. Lumen’s report shows user entry on high ports → victim relays. Lumen Blog

  • Compare egress IPs against Lumen’s published IoCs and your threat-intel feeds; Lumen also blocked SystemBC/REM traffic across their backbone. Lumen Blog

2) Patch the obvious—now

  • Prioritize Internet-facing services with known RCEs and anything flagged by your scanner as Critical/High; Lumen found ~20 unpatched CVEs per victim on average. Lumen Blog

3) Restrict abuse paths

  • Outbound policy: deny-by-default egress to unknown high ports; maintain egress allowlists per role.

  • Inbound policy: geo/ASN rate-limits on admin ports; move mgmt services off 0.0.0.0; enforce MFA on any web admin.

  • WAF & bot mitigation on auth endpoints; block password spraying and credential-stuffing patterns traced to proxy services. Lumen Blog

4) Identity & access

  • Remove standing admin on VMs; use JIT elevation; mandate FIDO2/passkeys for consoles and panels to reduce brute-force success.

5) Provider engagement

  • Ask your provider for abuse-desk SLAs, IP reputation dashboards, and automated sinkholing of known SystemBC ranges.

Hunt & Detect (high-signal ideas)

  • Egress anomalies: consistent multi-GB flows from generic daemons to ephemeral remote ports; sudden spikes after patch windows. Lumen Blog

  • C2 beacons: correlate repeated connections to 80+ known C2s (use Lumen IoCs). Lumen Blog

  • Role drift: web-only VMs initiating SSH/RDP brute-force outward (actor uses bots to attack others). Lumen Blog

  • Overlap with GoBrut: if you detect GoBrut behavior on a VPS, check for SystemBC proxy artifacts too (Lumen saw ~300 overlaps). Lumen Blog

(Tip: treat “missing telemetry” or watchdog flaps as incidents—high-bandwidth proxying can destabilize agents.)

If You Suspect Compromise (Clean-room Steps)

  1. Quarantine the VM (security group denying all egress except to patch repos).

  2. Acquire volatile data (netstat, open files, startup items) and disk image.

  3. Rotate keys/secrets used on that VM; audit adjacent hosts for same AMI/base image or credential reuse.

  4. Rebuild from trusted images; patch before re-exposing.

  5. Request provider-side IP reputation reset and confirm removal from blocklists.

Questions to Ask Your VPS/Cloud Provider

  • Do you enforce outbound rate-limits or automated blackhole for nodes behaving like proxies?

  • Can you auto-notify tenants when IPs hit SystemBC/REM Proxy blacklists?

  • Do you expose per-VM vulnerability telemetry to tenants (CVE counts/criticality)? Lumen observed extreme unpatched CVE density on victims. Lumen Blog

Sources & Further Reading

  • Lumen Black Lotus Labs: primary research—~1,500 daily bots, ~80% VPS, >80 C2, 31+ day lifespans, 20+ CVEs/host, REM Proxy links (Morpheus/AvosLocker), MikroTik pool. Lumen Blog

  • BleepingComputer: summary of SystemBC VPS “proxy highway” and daily bot counts. BleepingComputer

  • The Hacker News: REM Proxy powered by SystemBC; GoBrut (300) overlap; long infection lifetimes. The Hacker News

  • TechRadar Pro/Yahoo syndication: consumer-facing explainer echoing 1,500 bots, 80% VPS, and 160+ CVE example. TechRadar+1

Affiliate Toolbox (clear disclosure)

Disclosure: If you buy via the links you add here, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. These tools augment (not replace) the controls above:

Affiliate Toolbox (clearly disclosed)

Disclosure: If you buy via the links below, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. These items supplement (not replace) your security controls. This supports CyberDudeBivash in creating free cybersecurity content.

🌐 cyberdudebivash.com | cyberbivash.blogspot.com

  • External Attack Surface Management (EASM) — map exposed services/CVEs on your VPS fleet.

  • Outbound Firewall/SASE — per-VM egress allowlists + anomaly alerts.

  • Threat-intel + IP reputation — auto-block known SystemBC/REM C2/ranges.

  • Immutable backup for VMs — recover clean images fast if nodes are trashed.


CyberDudeBivash — Brand & Services 

CyberDudeBivash | Cybersecurity, AI & Threat Intelligence Network
We help hosting providers, MSPs, and cloud tenants shut down proxy abuse:

  • VPS Abuse Rapid Response: fleet triage, IoC blocking (Lumen overlap), rebuild runbooks.

  • Patch & Egress Hardening Sprint: CVE burn-down + deny-by-default egress policies.

  • Detection Engineering: high-volume proxy heuristics, GoBrut correlation, ASN reputation watch.

  • Board/Customer Reporting: before/after metrics, IP-rep recovery, SLA dashboards.

Book a rapid consult: [https://www.cyberdudebivash.com/contact] • Newsletter: CyberDudeBivash Threat Brief (weekly cloud/infra threats + ready-to-deploy controls).

FAQs

Is this a DDoS-for-hire botnet?
It’s primarily a proxy-as-a-service network; criminals rent these nodes to route phishing, brute-force, scraping, or ransomware staging. Some reports frame the capacity in DDoS terms due to bandwidth, but Lumen’s core finding is proxy abuse of VPS infrastructure. Lumen Blog

Why are VPS so attractive to SystemBC?
High bandwidth + long uptime and fewer user complaints vs. home devices; infections often persist 31+ days. Lumen Blog

How does this affect organizations that don’t use VPS?
You’ll see attacks coming through these proxies. Add look-back logic to detections: when an IP is later attributed to SystemBC, review past auth/API events from that IP. Lumen Blog

Affiliate Toolbox (clearly disclosed)

Disclosure: If you buy via the links below, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. These items supplement (not replace) your security controls. This supports CyberDudeBivash in creating free cybersecurity content.

🌐 cyberdudebivash.com | cyberbivash.blogspot.com

Where do I get IoCs?
Lumen released indicators and says it has blocked SystemBC/REM traffic across its backbone; import those IoCs and monitor for updates. Lumen Blog


#CyberDudeBivash #SystemBC #REMProxy #VPS #Botnet #MikroTik #Ransomware #CloudSecurity #EgressFiltering #ThreatIntel #BlackLotusLabs

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