centre{source}

An interesting article on eweek discusses a new strategy in fighting botnets: hunting for their ‘Command and Control’ servers — that is, the networks and computers that are sending them instructions.

A wise target, to be sure. Botnets are becoming a huge problem. More and more viruses are being designed not to run rampant on the Internet, unfettered and unlimited, but rather to spread in a limited fashion to result in a valuable botnet which is then sold to the highest bidder, for use in wonderful activities, from hacking to referer and comment spam.

Almost all of the comment/referer spam I get comes from botnets. Each hit comes from a new IP, making it nearly impossible to block. It’s a rather impressive display of the power and nuisance that botnets impose on the future of the Internet