Massive Botnet found on almost 2 million PCs
A large botnet from the Ukraine that has infected nearly 2 million computers is stunning security researchers, reports DarkReading.
The botnet, which appears to be larger than the infamous Storm botnet was in its heyday, has infected machines from some 77 government-owned domains — 51 of which are U.S. government ones, according to Ophir Shalitin, marketing director of Finjan, which recently found the botnet. Shalitin says the botnet is controlled by six individuals and is hosted in Ukraine.
Aside from its massive size and scope, what is also striking about the botnet is what its malware can do to an infected machine. The malware lets an attacker read the victim’s email, communicate via HTTP in the botnet, inject code into other processes, visit Websites without the user knowing, and register as a background service on the infected machine, for instance. The bots communicate with their command and control systems via HTTP.
[Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million Infected Consumer, Business, Government PCs]
Filed Under: Tech News
