An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a "zombie." That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called "botnets" — home and business PCs that are hooked together into a vast chain of cyber-robots that do the bidding of automated programs to send the majority of e-mail spam, to illegally seek financial information and to install malicious software on still more PCs.
Botnets remain an Internet scourge. Active zombie networks created by a growing criminal underground peaked last month at more than half a million computers, according to shadowserver.org, an organization that tracks botnets. Even though security experts have diminished the botnets to about 300,000 computers, that is still twice the number detected a year ago.
The actual numbers may be far larger; Microsoft investigators, who say they are tracking about 1,000 botnets at any given time, say the largest network still controls several million PCs.
"The mean time to infection is less than five minutes," said Richie Lai, who is part of Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement Team, a group of about 20 researchers and investigators. The team is tackling a menace that in the last five years has grown from a computer hacker pastime to a dark business that is threatening the commercial viability of the Internet.
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- Eat_Disco
- added this
- added October 21, 2008
- flag
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This is the reason so many people fear technology.
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Why isn't this an overwrought bestseller, then movie yet?
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linux no bugs :D
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I've been thinking my laptop might be infected. I'm planning on building a high power PC and running it on Linux Fedora.
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- Dmitri_Molotov
- 3 months ago
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so who runs an original version of XP without all the updates that you are asked all the time to download?? really, the computers these guys are hitting shouldn't even be on the internet in the first place.
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- outtheinside
- 3 months ago
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This is what happens when a major corporation that has built the backbone of major business operations pays more attention to the licensing of their product than the product itself. I have friends working up at MS and I commend the job they're doing; however they stepped into a clusterfuck and have no way of undoing the decade plus of crap code that is so full of holes that a grandma can take it down while baking her cookies and darning some socks. What really needs to happen is a team of competent programmers needs to disassemble the whole fucking mess, pick out the parts that work and tie them together in a way that doesn't allow for all the stupid holes we're seeing today. Unfortunately, that might mean that licensing wont be as easy to track, which means that the MS bigwigs will Never go for it. I hope Linux puts ALL them against the wall as they start the Revolution... ^_^
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Glad to see there are investigators consistently pursuing an end to this. There will always be a few bored/greedy/dumb crooks who opt for this as a lifestyle, but it needs to be drastically cut down from its current level. This is just ridiculous. I don't even know what the consequences are for someone who gets caught doing this. Perhaps the consequences should be more well-known, and hopefully it's a stern punishment.
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Old news, windows is open (ha, pun) to anything and everything until one computer has been screwed by, and saved from any given virus, and the programmer saves the virus definition for defence purposes and distributes it to the other computers. tux says "should have had linux."
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- jonny2times
- 3 months ago
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For outtheinside... heck, I still know people running Windows Millennium and Win98, and the company I work at has an outdated WinXP; their "computer expert" doesn't believe in updates, mainly because he still uses Norton to troubleshoot... *shudders*
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A trip down "Memory" lane, Wang, Remington......
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For now keep your antivirus up to date. If you’re worried about terrorists here’s a hypothetical view. When Trojans become sophisticated and are able to be infused with an OS at the development level. Take this as an example, a computer programmer who worked on Longhorn purposefully adds his idea of making your life interesting. Say by way of integrating his work with a Microsoft application or the operating system itself. Then we are all in for a rude awakening.
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- RubberRims
- 3 months ago
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This is a serious problem plaguing everyone on the PC. My best advice, turn on automatic updates, get virus protection, or get a Mac.
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I object to the headline. In no way should petty internet crime be allowed to downplay the THREAT that is zombies.
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- zombie_Jase
- 3 months ago
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Hello I'm a Mac, and this doesn't affect me.
Ben K.
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Do you remember all those e-mail with directions to forward to all your friends? Guess what happens to your e-mail address when you forward it to your friend's 'bot' computer?
Every email address in the whole chain gets forwarded to SPAM central!
So forward none of those e-mails. OK?
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First of all - the machine that was owned was designed to get owned. That's its job. Would it surprise you to learn that most of the hotpots out there simulate linux environments? If you think linux remote exploits don't exist then you're a lay user which an opinion.
Apple user, sorry, the botnet activity that I've seen indicates that you are owned. Along with the bot-herder I see which OSs are appearing on these channels. You can go back to burying your head in the sand now.
So sad that 99.9% of the users posting on forums don't have an accurate picture of the malware landscape. Would it surprise your *nix users to learn that you've had more critical patches on your OS to fix remote exploits than XP? ... and you're climbing further ahead too.
