Pandemic of the Botnets 2013
FYI...
Virut botnet takedown ...
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/01/...-virut-botnet/
Jan 18, 2013 - "Security experts in Poland on Thursday quietly seized domains used to control the Virut botnet, a huge army of hacked PCs that is custom-built to be rented out to cybercriminals... Some of the domains identified in the takedown effort — including ircgalaxy .pl and zief .pl — have been used as controllers for nearly half a decade. During that time, Virut has emerged as one of the most common and pestilent threats... The action against Virut comes just days after Symantec warned that Virut had been used to redeploy Waledac, a spam botnet that was targeted in a high-profile botnet takedown by Microsoft in 2010... Virut is often transmitted via removable drives and file-sharing networks. But in recent years, it has become one of the most reliable engines behind massive malware deployment systems known as pay-per-install (PPI) networks... It’s not clear how the actions by NASK will impact the long-term operations of the Virut botnet. Many of Virut’s control servers are located outside the reach of NASK, at Russian top-level domain name registrars (.ru). Also, Virut has a failsafe mechanism built to defeat targeted attacks on its infrastructure..."
Botnets Are Everywhere – See How They Spread ...
- http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs...al-botnet-map/
Jan 14, 2013 - "Cybercriminals today create and use botnets to perpetrate their criminal activities. Whether it is to send out Blackhole Exploit Kit spam or to use as entry points into organizations, the one constant is that most bots (victim computers) communicate back and forth with command and control (C&C) servers... we’re publishing a new global map* showing active C&C servers, highlighted by red dots, and bots (victim computers), highlighted by blue dots, to show you where these botnets are located in the world..."
* http://www.trendmicro.com/us/securit...map/index.html
- http://www.symantec.com/connect/blog...r-interruption
7 Jan 2013 - "... the Virut botnet is estimated at approximately 308,000 unique compromised computers that are active on a given day..."
