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INTERACTIVE AGENCY
InfoWorld: Global counterattack on zombie menace
The ever-evolving face of digital threats… BotNets are a growing risk for all those connected to the Internet.
Botnets or zombie networks are groups of computers that have been infected by malware that allow the malware to control the infected PC and use it to send spam or launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
A recent survey of CipherTrust estimated that 350,000 PCs a month are being recruited into this zombie army. So far in May, CipherTrust researchers found an average of 172,009 new zombies identified each day. Other surveys have suggested that there are millions of PCs worldwide that can generate spam or create DDoS attacks. Researchers from the Honeynet Project tracked more than 100 active botnets, including one containing 50,000 compromised “zombie” machines.
Take a moment to let that sink in… 350 THOUSAND computers being compromised & added to botnets PER MONTH. Possibly over a million active zombies at any one time.
The scariest part is that these botnets are actually ‘controlled’ by those that initiated the recruiting program (typically a worm or spyware application). For the right amount of money, you can rent these botnets to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks – or just a steady stream of spam.
But there’s hope… people are starting to think about it.
