botnets

News

• AT&T reluctant to support FCC call to adopt new PC security measures

  By Ellen Messmer | 09 March, 2012 05:42

  The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants the ISP broadband providers to help battle botnets by being more active in helping their subscribers eradicate malware infections on their PCs. But AT&T's chief security officer said AT&T is reluctant to go beyond its current anti-malware efforts.

• 2012 Outlook: The end of everything?

  By Mark Gibbs | 09 January, 2012 16:30

  Welcome to 2012, the year the world ends. Yes, in case you haven't been following the eschatologists out there (and most of them are definitely "out there"), 2012 will be "it" for humanity. The "last hurrah". Fini. Au revoir.

• Botnets decentralise after Redmond’s kingpin takedowns

  By Liam Tung | 19 August, 2011 08:38

  Recent efforts by Microsoft and law enforcement to take down the biggest spamming botnets may have helped fight pharmaceutical companies but they have had little effect on overall spam levels.

• Zeus leaks give tools to researchers, attackers

  By Robert Lemos | 14 May, 2011 07:09

  The source code and a manual to the popular crimeware creation kit Zeus has been leaked, perhaps giving defenders additional tools to fight infections but also raising concerns that criminals may use the source code to create a rapidly expanding compendium of variants.

• Group used 30,000-node botnet in MasterCard, PayPal attacks

  By Robert McMillan | 10 December, 2010 06:44

  PayPal's website was hit late Wednesday by two botnets as online activists continued their Web attacks on companies that have severed their relationships with WikiLeaks.

• Botnet takedown may yield valuable data

  By Jeremy Kirk | 02 September, 2010 20:25

  Researchers are hoping to get a better insight on botnets after taking down part of Pushdo, one of the top five networks of hacked computers responsible for most of the world's spam.

• Texas man to plead guilty to building botnet-for-hire

  By Robert McMillan | 29 April, 2010 07:23

  A Mesquite, Texas, man is set to plead guilty to training his 22,000-PC botnet on a local ISP -- just to show off its firepower to a potential customer.

• FBI embeds cyber-investigators in Ukraine, Estonia

  By Robert McMillan | 05 March, 2010 06:59

  Hoping to catch cybercrooks, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun embedding agents with law enforcement agencies in Estonia, the Ukraine and the Netherlands.

• Botnet revelation shows darker underbelly of malware

  By Tim Greene | 19 February, 2010 09:42

  Information gathered about a newly discovered botnet called Kneber indicates that multiple infections by different malware on the same host could work together as a sophisticated mechanism to give all the malware a better survival rate.

• Botnet targets major Web sites with junk SSL connection

  By Jeremy Kirk | 02 February, 2010 07:46

  More than 300 Web sites are being pestered by infected computers that are part of the Pushdo botnet, according to security researchers.

• Good Guys Bring Down the Mega-D Botnet

  By Erik Larkin | 28 December, 2009 13:52

  For two years as a researcher with security company FireEye, Atif Mushtaq worked to keep Mega-D bot malware from infecting clients' networks. In the process, he learned how its controllers operated it.

• Hackers find a home in Amazon's EC2 cloud

  By Robert McMillan | 11 December, 2009 06:26

  Security researchers have spotted the Zeus botnet running an unauthorized command and control center on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure.

• 3 basic steps to avoid joining a botnet

  By Joan Goodchild | 20 November, 2009 03:07

  Banging the drum for security awareness never gets old. As much as CSOs try to get folks to bone up on safe practices (both online and in the office), there are always going to be some who need reminding.

• FireEye moves quickly to quash Mega-D botnet

  By Jeremy Kirk | 11 November, 2009 09:48

  A computer security company known for battling botnets moved last week to try to shut down a persistent spam player.

• Botnet authors crash WordPress sites with buggy code

  By Robert McMillan | 05 November, 2009 08:58

  Webmasters who find an annoying error message on their sites may have caught a big break, thanks to a slip-up by the authors of the Gumblar botnet.