The Root of the Botnet Epidemic

Over the course of a few days in February 2000, a lone hacker was able to bring some of the Web’s larger sites to their knees, using just a few dozen machines and some relatively primitive software to cripple Yahoo, eBay, Etrade, Amazon, ZDnet and others for hours at a time. No one knew it at the...

Tips for Diminishing Botnet Attacks

Online, the biggest battle these days is against botnets: networks of infected computers which hackers can use — unbeknownst to the machine’s owner — for online crimes including sending out spam or launching a denial of service attack. The black-hat techniques employed to snare users into a botne...

SEO Scareware Campaign Compromises 200K Websites

Security researchers have detected a massive blackhat SEO search engine optimization campaign consisting of over 200,000 compromised web sites, all redirecting to fake security software Inst58s6.exe, commonly referred to as scareware. The massive blackat SEO campaign has been launched by the same...

An Inside Look at Botnet Chasers

They’re the Internet equivalent of storm chasers, spending endless hours scanning and sleuthing, looking for the telltale signs of botnets. Here’s an inside look at the battle against cybercrime’s weapons of mass infection. Read the full article. CSOonline.com...

Gaming Botnet Bleeds Over To The Enterprise

Botnets come in all shapes and sizes and if you can’t find one that fits your unique purposes off-the-rack, it’s trivial to create a custom one using a do-it-yourself construction kit – which helps to explain the diversity we’re seeing within the enterprise. In general though, enterprise-targeted...

The Debate Over Naming Botnets

The security industry lacks a uniform way to title botnets, and the result is sometimes a long list of names for the same botnet that are used by different antivirus vendors and that can be confusing to customers. As it stands now, the infamous Conficker is also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido...

Malicious Google AppEngine Used to Control Botnet

Arbor Networks researcher Jose Nazario has spotted a malicious Google AppEngine application being used to control a botnet of infected computers. The Google App Engine is feeding URLs to the zombies hijacked machines for them to download, Nazario explained. Read the full blog post arbornetworks.c...

How to Take Down a Botnet

The botnet problem has reached epidemic levels in recent months, with the continued growth of large-scale botnets, as well as the identification of smaller, more targeted networks around the world. But researchers have been taking steps to disrupt botnets of late, with some notable successes, as...

Spam Botnet Gaining Traction

Upping its output of spam by nearly 5 percent in recent weeks, a new botnet called Festi has grabbed the attention of researchers, cracking the list of top 10 most prolific spamming botnets. The botnet has apparently pumped up the volume of spam by recruiting more bots, about 60 percent of which...

Where Are We A Year After McColo Shutdown?

In the year since the shutdown of notorious Web hosting firm McColo, spammers are growing strong. Part of this is the result of improvements by botnet operators. Like anyone who is successful what they do, the people controlling the most powerful botnets in cyber-space learn from their mistakes...

Update Protection against Recent Malware Threats (2-Nov-09)

The update includes new protections against 10 recent malware threats: Botnet: Backdoor.Win32.Httpbot.yiTrojan: Packed.Win32.Krap.wTrickler: Trojan.Win32.Agent2.kxuTrickler: Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Pher.ijTrickler: Trojan-Downloader.Win32.SillyFDC-DSWorm: W32.FnumbotWorm:...

Facebook Password-Reset Spam is Botnet Attack

Virus hunters are raising the alarm for a large-scale spam attack that uses fake Facebook password-reset messages to trick PC users into downloading a dangerous piece of malware. The malicious executable is linked to the Bredolab botnet, which has been linked to massive spam runs and identity-the...

Botnet-Infected Computers Powering Click Fraud

According to new data from ClickForensics, botnet-infected computers are behind the majority of click-fraud attacks against advertisers and publishers. For the third quarter this year, about 43 percent of all fraudulent clicks came from computers within botnets. The figure is the highest in four...

Dave Dittrich on Botnets, Conficker and the Evolution of Malware

Dennis Fisher talks with Dave Dittrich of the University of Washington, one of the top botnet and malware researchers in the industry, about the evolution of botnets and malware, the innovations of the Nugache botnet and the monetization of large-scale botnets. Download Subscribe to the Digital...

On the Outlook Web Access Attacks, Adobe and Microsoft Patch Releases

In this episode, Ryan and Dennis discuss the Outlook Web Access phishing attacks, the huge Microsoft and Adobe patch releases and the massive scope of the botnet problem. Download SHOW NOTES: Zeus Trojan Part of New Outlook Web Access Phishing Scam Microsoft Ships Largest Batch of Security Patche...

Outlook Web Access Attack Using Pushdo Botnet

Here are some technical details on the Outlook Web Access phishing scheme. 1. The Spam According to our preliminary research, the spam emails which attacked OWA users, including Kaspersky, were sent using the pushdo botnet – which is based on malware from the Backdoor.Win32.NewRes family. These...

New Koobface Campaign Spoofs Adobe's Flash Updater

The botnet masters behind the most efficient social engineering driven botnet, Koobface, launched a new campaign currently spreading across Facebook with a new template spoofing Adobe’s Flash updater embedded within a fake YouTube page. Read the full story zdnet.com/Dancho Danchev...

Comcast Alerts Customers to PC Infections

CNet’s Elinor Mills has the scoop on a Comcast trial of a new automated service that will warn broadband customers of possible virus infections, if the computers are behaving as if they have been compromised by malware. For instance, a significant overnight spike in traffic being sent from a...

Botnet Caught Red Handed Stealing From Google

A recently discovered botnet has been caught siphoning ad revenue away from Google, Yahoo! and Bing and funneling it to smaller networks. According to researchers at Click Forensics, computers that are part of the so-called Bahama Botnet are infected with malware that sends them to counterfeit...

Malware Economy is Thriving

TORONTO — The legitimate economy may be in rough shape right now, but the same cannot be said for the underground economy. Malware authors and botmasters are thriving, experts say, with some online criminals charging as much as $3,500 for their attack toolkits. But don’t be intimidated by the hig...