September 27, 2007

Smaller botnets becoming more prevalent?

Vnunet is reporting that smaller botnets are becoming more popular.

Virus writers typically try to build the largest possible botnet to make it more powerful and therefore more valuable to rent out to criminals. But researchers have reported seeing these large groups broken down into smaller units.

"The problem for the owners is that if the central IRC server goes down they lose the whole botnet. These people do not want to put all their eggs in one basket, and are therefore running smaller botnets."

I think it also has to do with the fear of getting caught. The larger botnets attract much more attention and that's the last thing they need right now. Government agencies that have been limiting their investigations to botnets that were over a specific size should alter their policies to not let these cyber criminals slip bye.

[Cyber-criminals turn to smaller botnets]

Posted in IRC News , Tech News by #!/usr/bin/geek at 2007-09-27 12:46 ET (GMT-5)

Tags: computersecurity coporatesecurity datasecurity hacker hackers hacking