The 2007 Pandemic of the botnets

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6298641.stm
25 January 2007 ~ "Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening the internet's future, experts have warned. Up to a quarter of computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet... Mr Cerf, who is one of the co-developers of the TCP/IP standard that underlies all internet traffic and now works for Google, likened the spread of botnets to a "pandemic"*. Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet, between 100 and 150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr Cerf said... "Despite all that, the net is still working, which is amazing. It's pretty resilient," said Mr Cerf... Whatever the solution, the fight against botnets was a "war" that could only be won if all parties - regulators, governments, telecoms firms, computer users and hardware and software makers - worked together."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet
"...Botnets have become a significant part of the Internet, albeit increasingly hidden. Due to most conventional IRC networks taking measures and blocking access to previously-hosted botnets, controllers must now find their own servers. Often, a botnet will include a variety of connections, ranging from dial-up, ADSL and cable, and a variety of network types, including educational, corporate, government and even military networks. Sometimes, a controller will hide an IRC server installation on an educational or corporate site, where high-speed connections can support a large number of other bots. Exploitation of this method of using a bot to host other bots has proliferated only recently..."

* http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pandemic
"...Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population.."

>>> http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmw...=Stats.Botnets

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

- http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=2495
Last Updated: 2007-03-23 21:28:02 UTC ~ "According to data by Shadowserver*, the number of botnet-controlled machines has tripled in the last month. Specifically the jump seemed to start on March 8th or so and has kept going ever since. For the most part, they haven't tracked a significant increase in the number of botnets (only about a 20% jump), just the number of machines. The biggest C&C nets are near New York, Southern California, and near Germany. The biggest concentrations of botnet infected machines are in China, Brazil, and Argentina. So it appears botnet controllers are getting better at increasing the size of their herds."

* http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmw...otCounts#month

- http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/466
2007-03-22 ~ "...The weekly tally of bot-infected PCs tracked by the group rose to nearly 1.2 million this week, up from less than 400,000 infected machines two weeks ago. The surge reversed a sudden drop in infected systems--from 500,000 to less than 400,000--last December..."

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

(McAfee Threat Center - 2nd issue of McAfee Avert Labs security journal- Sage)
- http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp
Apr 2007 ~ "...Botnets: Cybercrime Central - The largest enabler of cybercrime today is the “botnet,” a network of robot-infected PCs centrally controlled by an attacker, or bot herder. Bots gained their current status as a result of several factors. Perhaps the most important is that bots leverage the work of others. Several bot families are considered open source projects, developed collaboratively and refined by many. But even more important, bot developers piggyback on the work done by well-intentioned security researchers... When such vulnerabilities are made public in an effort to raise awareness, bot authors incorporate the work into new versions of their threats. If the payout for a crime exceeds the risks involved and the effort required, attackers will flock to it..."

(Monthly Botnet size currently at 2.4 million)
- http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmw...otCounts#month

.

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

- http://www.pcworld.com/printable/art...printable.html
May 15, 2007 ~ "A tech trade group and a leading cybersecurity vendor applauded new legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress that would broaden penalties for cybercrime, including first-time penalties for botnet attacks. The Cyber Security Enhancement Act, introduced Monday, would create for the first time criminal penalties for botnet attacks often used to aid identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and the spread of spam and spyware... The bill would also broaden the definition of electronic data theft related to interstate or foreign communication, and expand the cyber extortion statute."


.

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

- http://www.informationweek.com/share...leID=199601992
May 18, 2007 ~ "Criminal cyber gangs are trying to steal zombie computers from rival botnets so they can boost their own numbers and raise the price they get from spammers.
Two or three online criminal gangs are waging an all-out battle for control of the largest botnets, sending out waves of malware aimed at stealing zombie computers from rival gangs to build up their own army. Each online gang is trying to build up the biggest botnet because the bigger the army of infected computers they control, the more money spammers and hackers will pay to use them, explains Shane Coursen, a senior technical consultant for Kaspersky Lab. Since the gangs have their own botnets already built up, they're all trying to pilfer victimized computers from their rivals, to diminish their competitor's botnets while they build up their own... the author of the well-known Storm Worm, also known as Zhelatin, is going head to head with the author or authors of the Warezov and Bagle worms. It's unclear whether one group is responsible for both the Warezov worm and the Bagle worm or if different groups are behind each one... "Instead of just one group that was kind of active, now we're looking at two definite groups and possibly three groups. The activities have increased very significantly over the last six months. We see a huge increase in the amount of spam, and it's largely because of this war"."

[xxchronic2007xx]

wow..... so basically there is an army of haxorz out there just spreading viruses like crazy? ......WOW over 100million shesh wtf!! im thinking there should be computers that are like are 100% immune to viruses,worms, and spyware i mean that would end most problems like the computer itselfs prevents from any of its important things to be deleted, anything being recorded like keystrokes, etc.
If that could happen it would be great..