December 19, 2007

Have Botnets Jumped The Shark?

Allysa Myers asked on McAfee's Avert Labs Blog if Botnets have jumped the shark?

Has the definition of botnet become so watered down that it loses any meaning? If so, do we need to find some new term to replace what used to specify a distinct group of malware? Or do we need to broaden our warnings to include all crimeware–including botnets, password stealers, remote-access Trojans, phishing, and spam?

She posed this question after the media and FBI broadened the definition of a botnet, "to include any functionality used by a botnet, including things such as password stealing and sending phishing emails or spam."

What do you think, is Myers on to something?

[Botnets Jump the Shark]

Posted in Tech News by #!/usr/bin/geek at 2007-12-19 00:26 ET (GMT-5)

Tags: botnet irc computersecurity coporatesecurity datasecurity hacker hackers hacking