Pandemic of the botnets
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
